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WITH MILTON 
AND THE CAVALIERS 




John Milton. 

Front the painting by Van der Plaas in the National Portrait Gallery . 



WITH MILTON 
AND THE CAVALIERS 



BY 

MRS. FREDERICK BOAS 

author of "english history for children, 
"in shakspere's England" 



NEW YORK 
JAMES POTT AND COMPANY 



LONDON 

JAMES NISBET & CO., LIMITED 

1905 



^ k 



,Ss/6>£p<® 



oi 



FRIDERICO YORK POWELL 

HISTORIAE HODIERNAE PROFESSORI REGIO, 

PRAECEPTORI LOCUPLETI, ACUTO MONITORI, FIDO AMICO. 

OPUSCULUM, IPSIUS PERMISSU IPSI ANTE CINERES OBLATUM, 

DEFUNCTI SANCTAE MEMORIAE SACRUM, 

MUNUS QUALECUMQUE, 

DEDICO 



VI 1 



CONTENTS 

CHAP. PAGE 

I. Charles I i 

II. Oliver Cromwell 38 

III. The Cavaliers: Prince Rupert, Montrose, 

and Goring 69 

IV. The Puritans : Hampden and Hutchinson . 96 
V. Strafford and Pym . . . . .127 

VI. Laud and Juxon 151 

VII. Bunyan 174 

VIII. Jeremy Taylor, Baxter, and Fox . . .210 

IX. George Herbert, and Lord Falkland. . 237 
X. Two Prose Writers : Lord Clarendon and 

Sir Thomas Browne 265 

XI. The Poets : Waller, Carew, Herrick, 
Lovelace, and Suckling. Vaughan, 

Traherne, Crashaw, and Cowley. . 287 

XII. Milton 313 



to! 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 



Milton 
Charles I. 
Oliver Cromwell 
Prince Rupert 
John Hampden 
Lord Strafford 
Archbishop Laud 
Bunyan 

George Herbert 
Lord Falkland 
Sir Thomas Browne 
Edmund Waller 



. Frontispiece 
To face page 12 
38 



128 
152 

174 
238 
254 
278 
288 



WITH MILTON AND THE 
CAVALIERS 



CHAPTER I 

CHARLES I 



There is, perhaps, no sadder career in the whole 
of English history than that of Charles I. 

The very designations by which he is known, 
mark, by their varying character, the changes 
through which he passed. 

He was Baby Charles, he was Charles I., and 
the White King-so styled by Lilly the Astrologer- 
then he became merely "the man Charles Stuart," 
at least in the mouths of many; and now, among 
those who look only on one side of the picture, 
he lives in memory always as Charles the Martyr. 

Between the first fond foolish name, given by 
his eccentric but indulgent father, and the last 
mournful appellation, yawns a gulf which repre- 
sents a complete change in the English Monarchy. 
At the very names Baby Charles, and Steenie, 
there rises before us the picture of Scottish James,' 



2 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

and his quaint surroundings, that mixture of home- 
liness and pedantry which he had brought with 
him from the North, and which harmonised so ill 
with the still existing splendours of the Court of 
his great predecessor. 

The picture is not dignified, but it is pleasant ; 
we watch the kindly, shrewd, ungainly King, clad 
in his padded dagger-proof suit, alternately spout- 
ing " Dog-Latin," and bad English quotations, or 
haggling with reluctant tradesmen over the price 
of their merchandise ; and, later on, we see him 
again as the " dear dad " of Buckingham, encourag- 
ing his familiarities, addressing Lord Salisbury as 
his " Little Beagle," and his son and Buckingham 
together as his tl sweet babes." 

And yet, through all the pedantry and extrava- 
gance of his letters breathes the spirit of shrewd 
common sense, which kept his dominions in a 
state of tranquillity. Men at the time may have 
called his rule inglorious, but the strength of it 
they only fully realised when the sceptre passed 
into Charles' hand. 

Born in Scotland, at Dunfermline, on November 
19th, 1600, Charles yet possessed little trace of 
Scottish origin in his character. As a child he 
was so weak and ailing that it was no easy task 
to find a noble lady willing to undertake the re- 



CHARLES I. 3 

sponsibility of rearing him. His legs were so 
feeble that he crawled like a baby until he was 
nearly seven years old, and besides being very 
backward in his speech, he had some impediment 
which he never quite surmounted. His life would 
probably have been a happy and contented one 
had his cheery elder brother, Prince Henry, lived to 
keep him from becoming a king, and to make him 
in reality, what he promised to do at one time as they 
played together, the Archbishop of Canterbury. 

A strong affection existed between the two 
brothers, which shows through the somewhat 
forced style of composition in an early letter sent 
by the little Prince Charles, then nine years old, 
to his elder brother, and which runs thus : — 

" Nothing can be more agreeable to me, dearest 
brother, than your return to us ; for to enjoy your 
company, to ride with you, to hunt with you, will 
yield to me supreme pleasure. I am now reading 
the ' Conversations of Erasmus,' from which I am 
sure I can learn both the purity of the Latin tongue 
and elegance of behaviour. Farewell ! Your 
Highness's most loving brother, 

Charles Duke of York and Albany." 

The Dukedom of York was conferred on the 
little Prince in January 1605, before he was five 



4 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

years old, and he was crowned with a golden 
circlet, and a little sword was buckled to his side ; 
as he was beginning to gain strength now, he may 
have been boyish enough to enjoy its possession. 
But his love for manly sport, in his early years 
at least, was less for its own sake than through 
his affection for his sturdier brother, to whom he 
writes again : — 

" Sweet, sweet Brother, — I thank you for your 
letter. I will keep it better than all my graith ; 
and I will send my pistols by Master Newton " 
(Prince Henry's tutor). " I will give anything that 
I have to you ; both my horses, and my books, 
and my pieces, and my cross-bows, or anything 
that you would have. Good brother, love me, 
and I shall ever love and serve you. — Your loving 
brother to be commanded, York." 

And another letter runs : — 

"Good Brother, — I hope you are in good health 
and merry, as I am, God be thanked. In your 
absence I visit sometimes your stable and ride 
your great horses, that at your return I may wait 
on you in that noble exercise. So committing you 
to God, I rest, Your loving and dutiful brother, 

" York," 



CHARLES I. 5 

Of his more serious pursuits he writes to his 
father in early days : — 

" Sweet, sweet Father, — i learn to decline sub- 
stantives and adjectives. Give me your blessing. 

H '\ thank you for my best man. — Your loving 
son, York." 

And in an early letter to his mother, Queen 
Anne, we find one of the few allusions this ascetic 
prince ever made to " creature comforts." He de- 
plores her sufferings from the gout, "the which," 
he writes, " I must bear the more patiently, because 
it is the sign of a long life." And he goes on 
to say that he must bewail her illness for many 
causes; "and specially because it is troublesome 
to you, and has deprived me of your most comfort- 
able sight, and of many good dinners, the which 
I hope, by God's grace, shortly to enjoy." 

Childhood at that time, and especially royal 
childhood, was soon over ; and Prince Charles' 
ended prematurely just before his twelfth birthday, 
when his position was changed to one of heavy 
responsibility by the death of his elder brother. 
Henceforth he became heir to the kingdoms of 
England and Scotland. 

His was a nature peculiarly ill-fitted to rule. 



6 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

Grave, reserved, and dignified, with a patient sweet- 
ness of disposition which no ill-treatment could 
sour, and a lofty purity of life which not even 
the lax morality of his time could affect ; he yet 
lacked most of the qualities which go to make a 
leader among men. He had narrow sympathies, 
and an inherent love of crooked ways, and his 
belief in the Divine Right of Kings was the source 
of all his troubles. England had passed beyond 
the day when " the King could do no wrong," and 
Charles I. was the last man to bring back such 
a state of things. We need only study the con- 
dition, at the time of his accession, of the two 
kingdoms over which he was called to reign, to 
see that he needed most that which he most 
fatally lacked, the qualities of uprightness and 
strength. 

His understanding was narrow, and he had 
rendered his sympathies still narrower by the style 
of his reading and his friends. What he needed 
to learn, and what he never learned to the day 
of his death, was the power of the English people ; 
that which Queen Elizabeth had understood always, 
and in which her strength had lain, and that in 
which lay the strength too of England's latest 
Queen, Victoria. 

A curious foretaste of Charles' attitude towards 



CHARLES I. 7 

the Commons is found in a letter to Buckingham, 
before he was twenty-one, in which he writes : — 

"The Lower House this day has been a little 
unruly ; but I hope it will turn to the best ; for, 
before they rose, they began to be ashamed of it. 
Yet I could wish that the King would send down 
a commission here, that (if need were) such seditious 
fellows might be made an example to others, by 
Monday next, and till then I would let them alone. 
It will be seen whether they mean to do good, or 
to persist in their follies ; so that the King needs 
to be patient but a little while. I have spoken 
with so many of the council, as the King trusts 
most, and they are all of his mind, only the sending 
of authority to set seditious fellows fast is of my 
adding." 

The last sentence is significant of the prince's 
future attitude towards his own Parliament ! 

As has so often been the case, Charles' natural 
defects as a ruler were further aggravated by his 
choice of a bride. 

In February, 1623, he had with difficulty obtained 
his father's leave to go incognito to the court of 
Spain, accompanied by the King's favourite, Buck- 
ingham, for the purpose of negotiating a marriage 
with the Infanta of Spain. 

The expedition was one of continual trials, be- 



8 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

ginning with that of a bad sea-passage, of which 
Buckingham writes to King James, " The first that 
fell sick was your son, and he that continued it 
longest was myself." 

For a time the Spanish marriage seemed likely to 
be arranged. Of course, the difference of religion 
between the two was a matter of difficulty, but 
Charles received a friendly letter from the Pope 
himself, which he answered at great length : the 
last sentence reads almost as a prophecy. "Be 
your holiness persuaded that I am and ever shall 
be of such moderation as to keep aloof, as far 
as possible, from every undertaking which may 
testify any hatred towards the Roman Catholic 
religion ; nay, rather I will seize all opportunities 
by a gentle and generous mode of conduct to 
remove all sinister suspicions entirely ; so that, as 
we all confess one undivided Trinity and one 
Christ crucified, we may be banded together 
unanimously into one faith. That I may accom- 
plish this, I will reckon as trifling all my labours 
and vigilance, and even the hazards of kingdoms, 
and life itself." 

But the marriage did not take place. The 
Spanish princess had contemplated the conver- 
sion of Charles, and consequent privileges for the 
English Roman Catholics ; she did not allow her 



CHARLES I. 9 

suitor to converse with her except in public, and 
he lingered on in Madrid becoming more and 
more dissatisfied at the state of affairs, until he 
finally returned home in anger, and the negotia- 
tions for the marriage were broken off. 

Soon after this came the death of James I. and 
Charles' accession to the throne. The joy with 
which his Protestant subjects had seen the failure 
of his attempt to win the Infanta as his bride was 
soon damped by his marriage with another Roman 
Catholic princess, Henrietta Maria, the sister of 
the French king and the youngest daughter of 
the famous Henri IV. She was not sixteen at 
the time of her marriage by proxy in Paris, and 
she then came over to England, with a large 
retinue of priests and attendants, and escorted by 
Buckingham, who had been sent over to Paris 
for that purpose. She met her young husband 
at Dover, whither he had come to welcome her ; 
she was evidently no better a sailor than he, for 
she sent to him a request to delay his arrival at 
Dover until the day after her own, so as to give 
her time to recover from the "green sickness." 

Henrietta Maria was a little slender, black-eyed 
maiden of fifteen; brown-haired, dark-skinned, 
graceful and vivacious. She had been bred up 
according to the French fashion of the time, with 



io WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

elegant accomplishments, such as dancing, singing, 
and acting, but with no training at all in the more 
serious subjects of education, which might have 
helped her to understand something about the 
people among whom she now came to dwell. She 
had been educated as a devoted Catholic, and she 
came to her kingdom surrounded with zealous 
ecclesiastics of her own faith, whose ministrations 
and prohibitions were a source of trouble between 
her and her husband from the beginning of their 
union. 

When her mother, Mary de Medici, had parted 
with her at Amiens, she had given her a letter 
of advice and exhortation which, while signed and 
written by her, was in reality the work of Car- 
dinal Richelieu. In this letter breathes the spirit 
which aggravated so many of the difficulties be- 
tween the royal pair and their subjects. The 
young queen is not only urged to be firm and 
zealous in her own religion, like her great ancestor, 
St. Louis, but to pray daily, and have special 
prayers made, that her husband too might be 
drawn into the true religion. In the light of 
modern history, it is a little startling to find 
Henrietta being told that Mary Queen of Scots, 
her husband's grandmother, is filled in heaven 
with this great wish for her grandchild. 



CHARLES I. ii 

Animated by such instructions, and with nothing 
but an uneducated girl's sharp shallow nature to 
help her, it was not much wonder that the poor 
child soon grew up into a mischievous intriguer. 

Her meeting with Charles at Dover was most 
affectionate ; she kneeled and kissed his hand, and 
he lifted the small figure in his arms and kissed 
her many times. Later in the day he, having 
already dined, carved for her at her first dinner 
on English soil, for in her storm-tossed condition 
the previous evening she had probably eaten 
little. 

Venison and pheasant were served, and the 
Queen partook of both, though warned by her 
confessor that it was a fast-day, and from this 
little incident her Protestant subjects formed the 
erroneous belief that she would soon join the faith 
of her husband. 

A letter written at the time gives a good ac- 
count of their reception in London, whither they 
journeyed leisurely vid Canterbury and Gravesend, 
and there embarked on the royal barge. 

"The last night at five o'clock, there being a 
very great shower, the King and Queen in the 
royal barge, with many other barges of honour, 
and thousands of boats, passed through London 
Bridge to Whitehall ; infinite numbers, besides 



12 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

these, in wherries, standing in houses, ships, 
lighters, western barges, and on each side of the 
shore. Fifty good ships discharging their ord- 
nance as their majesties passed along by ; as, last 
of all, the Tower did such a peal, as I believe 
she never before heard the like. The King and 
Queen were both in green suits. The barge 
windows, notwithstanding the vehement shower, 
were open, and all the people shouting amain. 
She put out her hand and shaked it unto them. 
She hath already given some good signs of hope 
that she may ere long, by God's blessing, become 
ours in religion." 

And another contemporary account says : " Yes- 
terday I saw them coming up from Gravesend, 
and never beheld the King to look so merrily. 
In stature, her head reached to his shoulder ; 
but she is young enough to grow taller. . . . 
'Twixt Gravesend and London she had the beauti- 
ful and stately view of part of our Navy that is 
to go to sea, which gave her a volley of fifteen 
hundred great shot. So they arrived at Whitehall, 
where they continue till Monday, when they go 
to Hampton Court. On Sunday there is a great 
feast at Whitehall." 

It is pleasant to think that there were some 
bright days at the beginning of the marriage 




Walker &■ Cccktrell 



Charles I. 

After Van Dyck. In the National Portrait Gallery. 



CHARLES I. 13 

which was to end in such tragic gloom, and that 
its early days at least were welcomed with as brave 
a show as graced even some of the progresses of 
Elizabeth. 

But misunderstandings arose almost immediately, 
and for them two causes seemed specially to 
blame : on the Queen's side, the fact of her 
being an instrument in the hands of powerful 
alien advisers, and on the King's, that he poured 
all his conjugal differences of the most minute 
kind into the ears of his favourite, Buckingham. 
Can anything better illustrate how near a quarrel 
they were than the fact of such passages as the 
following occurring in Charles' letters to the Duke 
before he had been married much more than a 
year ? 

"At my first meeting of her at Dover, I could 
not expect more testimonies of respect and love 
than she showed ; as, to give one instance. Her 
first suit was, that she being young, and coming to 
a strange country, both by her years and ignorance 
of the customs of the place, might commit many 
errors ; therefore, that I would not be angry with 
her for her faults of ignorance, before I had, by my 
instructions, learned her to eschew them ; and 
desired me, in these cases, to use no third person, 
but to tell her myself, when I found she did any- 



i 4 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

thing amiss. I both granted her request and 
thanked her for it ; but desired that she would use 
me as she had desired me to use her; which she 
willingly promised me, which promise she never 
kept." 

The use of a " third person " in their intercourse 
seems to have been one of their mistakes from the 
beginning. And can we wonder that when Charles, 
as he writes to Buckingham, sends " some of my 
council to her with those orders that were kept in 
the queen my mother's house, desiring she would 
command the Count of Tilliers that the same might 
be kept in hers," the prompt reply comes back 
from his wife that "she hoped I would give her 
leave to order her house as she list herself." 
Surely here is a strong instance in a trifling 
matter of Charles' most fatal defect, his want of 
insight into the character of others, for what 
could be more trying to a young wife than to 
have "orders" sent her to keep her house by the 
pattern — however good — of her mother-in-law ? 

Charles' letter to Buckingham goes on to tell 
of his surprise at her conduct, and that he " took 
a time, when I thought we had both best leisure 
to dispute it, to tell her calmly both her fault in 
the public denial and her mistaking the business 
itself. She, instead of acknowledging her fault 



CHARLES I. 15 

and mistaking, gave me so ill an answer that I 
omit (not to be tedious) the relation of that dis- 
course." It is easy to imagine the nature of the 
"ill answer" given to her husband's "calm telling" 
of her fault. 

The constant difficulties between the royal 
pair were generally at first connected with the 
members of the Queen's private household ; 
and it must have been no easy matter to live 
peaceably while the King's household was Pro- 
testant and the Queen's Roman Catholic : the 
very chaplains were rivals, in a most unseemly 
way. 

On one occasion, as Charles and his wife were 
about to dine, and the King's chaplain began to 
say grace, the Queen's confessor, standing beside 
him, raised his voice in a loud Latin benediction. 
The chaplain pushed his brother cleric on one 
side, and with great energy finished his perform- 
ance, while the King hastened to draw one of 
the dishes towards him, and made a sign that 
dinner was to begin. But the two ecclesiastics 
evidently nursed their wrath while the meal pro- 
ceeded, for no sooner was it at an end than such 
an unseemly duet between the two began that 
Charles led his wife from the room in displeasure, 
and left them to finish alone. 



1 6 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

It was impossible that two such households 
should dwell together with any sort of comfort, 
and especially as every penance exacted from 
the Queen by her confessors was, as it were, 
a "red rag" to her Protestant subjects. Her 
clerical advisers most unwisely sent her to 
walk barefoot to the spot in Tyburn where the 
traitors concerned in the Gunpowder Plot had 
been executed, and this act, of course, raised 
a storm of indignation throughout London and 
elsewhere. 

Nor was the King's own conduct such as 
to smooth matters between the two religious 
parties. On his first speech in Parliament, when, 
according to his belief in the Divine Right of 
Kings, which in the end cost him his throne, 
he wore his crown before his coronation, a con- 
temporary writer tells us that "before he would 
enter into the business he caused a Bishop to 
say prayers ; before the beginning whereof he 
made the doors suddenly to be shutt, and so 
enforced the Popish Lords to be present ; some 
whereof kneeled down, some stood upright, and 
one did nothing but crosse himself." 

Religious matters in the royal household seemed 
in such a state of unseemly rivalry that, even in 
the Chapel Royal, a Roman Catholic nobleman 



CHARLES I. 17 

is described as "praying on purpose louder than 
the chaplain prayed," and receiving, after a time, 
from the King himself, the angry message, "either 
let him come and do as we do, or I will make 
him prate further off." 

On February 2nd, 1626, the coronation took place 
in Westminster Abbey, but the Queen declined 
to take part in it, and watched the procession 
from her windows, while her ladies, we are told, 
" frisked and danced in the room " around her. 

The procession gathered in Westminster Hall, 
and thence proceeded to the church ; the Arch- 
bishop then presented Charles, bareheaded, to the 
people. He was crowned, clad in a crimson 
shirt, and anointed ; and then, having received the 
Communion, he ascended the throne in his purple 
robes, and received the homage of all his peers. 

From the first the difficulties with the Queen's 
Roman Catholic retinue were many, and time 
seemed only to increase them ; so that Charles, 
after more than a year's discomfort, resolved to 
dismiss the whole body. 

It was a large household, ranging, besides the 
clergy, who were the cause of so much dissension, 
from governesses, maids-of-honour, and gentlemen- 
ushers to yeomen of the pantry, pages of the robes, 

and " children " and " scowrers " of the kitchen. 

B 



1 8 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

The King softened their dismissal by large gifts 
of money ; the very " children of the kitchen " 
were to receive ^20 apiece, and " Madam Nurse 
and her husband" .£1000 between them, although 
she was eventually allowed to remain with her 
mistress, besides one "that hath used to dresse 
her," and "some douzen others of the inferior 
sorte, as bakers, cooks," &c. 

There was some little difficulty in the final 
despatch of the French party, who refused to 
leave without special order from the King; 
the Bishop especially, as a contemporary ex- 
presses it, standing '* upon his punctilios." 
However, the same writer goes on to describe 
how the matter was settled by the King sending 
a Captain of the Guard with yeomen, heralds, 
and trumpeters, first to proclaim his Majesty's 
pleasure at the gate of Somerset House, and 
then, if there were any further delay, "to put it 
in execution, by turning all the French out of 
Somerset House by head and shoulders, and 
shutting the gate after them." " Which news," 
he adds, "so soon as the French heard, their 
courage came downe, and they yielded to be 
gone the next tyde. 

"The time being come, my Lord Conway, Mr. 
Treasurer, and Mr. Comptroller went to see them 



CHARLES I. 19 

performe their promise, and brought the Bishop 
out of the gate to the boot of his coach, where 
he, making a stand, told them he had one favour 
more to crave at their hands, namely, that they 
would permit him to stay till the midnight- tide, 
to the ende he might go away private and coole, 
which was not denyed him." 

The Bishop naturally feared an expression of 
public opinion if the party were openly driven 
forth all together in the daylight ; only one 
French priest was left with the young Queen, and 
he described as " the silliest of them all," and 
so hostile was the general feeling that the very 
housekeeper at St. James', when bidden to pre- 
pare for another visitor at once, sends word to the 
King that "the French had so defiled that House, 
as a week's worke would not make it cleane." 

So on August 7th, 1626, a year and a half after 
his marriage, Charles wrote to the Duke of Buck- 
ingham, " I command you send all the French 
away to-morrow out of the town." That simple 
sentence is more to his credit than the rest of 
the letter, which runs : " If you can, by fair means 
(but stick not long in disputing), otherwise force 
them away ; driving them away like so many 
wild beasts, until ye have shipped them ; and so 
the devil go with them ! " 



20 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

This act certainly led to greater harmony be- 
tween Charles and the Queen, so that he writes 
to the Duke rather more than a year later : " I 
cannot omit to tell you that my wife and I were 
never better together ; she . . . showing herself 
so loving to me by her discretion upon all 
occasions, that it makes us all wonder and 
esteem her." 

But, in such alien surroundings, the young light- 
minded and uneducated Queen was developing 
into an unwise intriguer, the very worst adviser 
for her husband in his position. 

Her temper was such that a contemporary 
writes : " She seems of a more than ordinary 
resolution. With one frown, divers of us being 
at Whitehall to see her (being at dinner, and the 
room somewhat overheated with the fire and 
company), she drave us all out of the chamber. 
I suppose none but a Queen could cast such a 
scowl." 

The King's affection for his wife was deep and 
lasting, and he seemed soon to reconcile her to 
the loss of her French household, but her want 
of those qualities in which he was himself most 
lacking, prevented her having any influence over 
him for good. 

Young and uneducated as she was, and bred up 



CHARLES I. 21 

under an absolute monarchy such as Richelieu had 
made that of France, her one idea was to urge 
her husband to acts of more and more absolute 
despotism. 

The political history of their reign is one of the 
most interesting of our country, but it cannot here 
be fully discussed. 

From the year 1628, when Charles bound him- 
self by his signature to keep the Petition of 
Right, which was a recapitulation of John's Magna 
Carta, until the morning of January 30th, 1649, 
when he stepped out of his palace window to 
meet his death at the hands of his own people, 
his life is one sad series of broken promises and 
fatal mistakes. 

The only way in which it might have been 
possible to stave off a revolution would have 
been for Charles to make himself an absolute 
monarch, but he had neither the strength nor the 
ability for such a position. He could never make a 
decision rapidly, and he hesitated over every course 
of action in a manner most fatal to a leader ; and, 
worst of all, his belief in his own Divine Right as 
king prevented him from considering as binding 
the promises made to his subjects. He was not 
clear-headed, and in each crisis in the Civil War 
between himself and his Parliament he failed to 



22 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

understand his own position, and so continually 
aggravated the evils which existed. 

In 1628 he lost his old friend the Duke of Buck- 
ingham, who was stabbed at Portsmouth by Felton, 
a fanatical soldier, for the sake of a private grudge, 
and neither Strafford nor Archbishop Laud, who 
henceforth became the King's chief advisers, were 
men calculated to widen his sympathies. 

For eleven years no Parliament was summoned, 
and the money which Charles needed was raised 
by taxes such as the Petition of Right had rendered 
illegal. 

The spirit of Puritanism was growing throughout 
the land, and the policy of Laud tended but to 
increase it. 

He and Charles were alike high-minded lofty 
Churchmen, with a true and deep spirit of devotion 
to their faith, but it was a cruel fate which made 
them rulers in England at a time when tolerance, 
insight into human nature, and wide sympathies 
were the first requisites in those who would govern 
by peace. 

Strafford was sent as Lord Deputy to Ireland, 
and carried out his high-handed measures in such 
a way as to bring about external order at least in 
that unfortunate country, but little permanent good 
was effected ; discontent smouldered below the 



CHARLES I. 23 

surface, ready always to break out into open 
rebellion. Laud, too, had carried his labours out 
of England, and had raised a storm of indignation 
in Scotland by imposing a Liturgy on the Church 
there, and in 1638 the National Covenant was 
signed in Scotland by men of all classes. 

Two years later Charles was forced to summon 
a Parliament, but neither from it, nor from the 
Council he called at York, could he get the supplies 
he needed, so in November 1640 he summoned his 
famous Long Parliament. 

Tragic events now followed closely on one an- 
other ; the Commons' belief in Strafford and Laud 
as the King's most dangerous advisers led to the 
impeachment of both, the execution of Strafford, 
and the imprisonment of Laud. Then came the 
Grand Remonstrance, and Charles' most fatal 
mistake, that of impeaching the five members for 
joining with the Covenanters against him. The 
five members were Pym, Hampden, Haselrig, 
Hollis, and Strode. 

The King went in person to the House to de- 
mand the impeachment, and as he " stepped through 
the door which none of his predecessors had ever 
passed," so writes Gardiner, " he was, little as he 
thought it, formally acknowledging that power had 
passed into new hands. The revolution which his 



24 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

shrewd father had descried when he bade his at- 
tendants to set stools for the deputies of the 
Commons as for the ambassadors of a king, was 
now a reality before him. He had come to the 
Commons because they would no longer come to 
him." But Charles understood nothing of the 
significance of the occasion ; " in his eyes," says 
Gardiner, " there was visible no more than a 
mortal duel between King Charles and King Pym." 

The scene which followed was painful and un- 
dignified ; the five members, urged by their col- 
leagues, had left the House before the King's arrival, 
and when Charles called on them by name only 
silence answered him. 

"Where are they ?" he demanded of the Speaker, 
Lenthall, after vainly scanning the benches of the 
House. " May it please your Majesty," was the 
diplomatic reply, " I have neither eyes to see nor 
tongue to speak in this place but as the House is 
pleased to direct me, whose servant I am here ; and 
I humbly beg your Majesty's pardon that I cannot 
give any other answer than this to what your 
Majesty is pleased to demand of me." And the 
King saw that his effort had failed. "Well, well," 
he said, and tried to show no emotion, " 'tis no 
matter ; I think my eyes are as good as another's." 
He saw there was no more to be done then, and 



CHARLES I. 25 

tried to make the most dignified exit possible. 
" Since I see all my birds are flown," he said, " I 
do expect from you that you will send them unto 
me as soon as they return hither. But I assure 
you, on the word of a king, I never did intend 
any force, but shall proceed against them in a 
legal and fair way, for I never meant any other. 
And now, since I see I cannot do what I came for, 
I think this no unfit occasion to repeat what I have 
said formerly, that whatsoever I have done in favour 
and to the good of my subjects, I do mean to main- 
tain it. I will trouble you no more, but tell you I 
do expect, as soon as they come to the House, you 
will send them to me ; otherwise I must take my 
own course to find them." And, unable at the last 
to keep to the judicial tone he had assumed, he 
added, " For their treason was foul, and such a one 
as they would all thank us to discover." 

Then he left the House with his nephew and his 
band of armed men, and low cries of " Privilege, 
privilege " followed him from the angry members. 

This scene was the beginning of the first Civil 
War. 

On the 23rd of October 1642 was fought the 
indecisive battle of Edge Hill, whence the King 
marched on London, and then weakly retreated to 
Oxford, which became henceforth his headquarters. 



26 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

He was at the head of a gallant army, and his 
nephew, Prince Rupert, the son of his sister, Eliza- 
beth, and the ex-Elector Palatine, was a brave and 
fiery leader, though more of the gallant mediaeval 
type than was quite fitted to cope with such men 
as Ireton and Cromwell. 

The battles followed one another in rapid suc- 
cession : on June 18th, 1643, the Royalists were 
victorious at Chalgrove Field, near Oxford, and 
there Hampden received his death-blow, and three 
months later the Parliamentary army gained the 
day at the first battle of Newbury, where the 
gallant Lord Falkland was killed. Before the end 
of that year Pym had died, and Charles had made 
a league with the Irish Roman Catholics, which 
brought him little but ill-will, while the Parlia- 
mentary party had openly made friends with the 
Scotch Presbyterians. 

The battle of Marston Moor, July 2nd, 1644, gave 
the North, which had hitherto been faithful to the 
Crown, into the hands of the opposite party, and 
though Charles held his own at the second battle 
of Newbury, on October 27th, his power was really 
waning. 

He refused the terms offered at the treaty of 
Uxbridge, on the 10th of January 1645 ; he had 
the grief of seeing the aged Archbishop Laud be- 



CHARLES I. 27 

headed, and on June 16th of the same year his 
army suffered the great defeat at Naseby. But 
even at this time Charles failed to see in how weak 
a position he really was, and considered that he 
could still play off the Scotch Presbyterians and 
the Parliamentary party one against the other. 

He refused to listen to the heads of the pro- 
posals, by which he was offered fair terms, and he 
opened secret negotiations with the Scotch, and at 
last decided to give himself up into the hands of 
the Scotch army, which step again showed how 
entirely he failed to understand his own position. 

Disguised as a servant, and with only two com- 
panions, a clergyman, Dr. Hudson, and a groom 
named Ashburnham, he fled by night from Oxford, 
over Magdalen Bridge, and made his way through 
dangers and difficulties to the Scotch camp at 
Newark ; there he gave himself up into the hands 
of the general, Lord Levin. 

From this time the scene and the central figure 
of the play seems to alter, at least in our opinion. 

The story ceases to be that of a weak and un- 
trustworthy king falling ever deeper into the mire 
which his own actions make ready for him ; it 
becomes instead the record of a narrow-minded 
but high-souled captive, enduring slights, hard- 
ships, and separation from all he loved, with a 



28 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

dignity and patience which it is hard not to 
admire. 

Even in the camp where he had taken refuge he 
was soon made to understand in what light he was 
regarded. 

At one of the services held there, it is said, the 
Presbyterian minister gave out before his face the 
psalm in the metrical version : — 

" Why dost thou, tyrant, boast thyself 
Thy wicked deeds to praise?" 

And the King, rising with dignity, calmly proposed 
in its place the penitential psalm beginning : — 

" Have mercy, Lord, on me, I pray, 
For men would me devour." 

From henceforth Charles' life was that of a 
captive. 

He was sent by the Scotch to Newcastle, then 
to Holmby, and thence by Cromwell's orders was 
removed to Newmarket, and again after various 
stages to his own palace at Hampton Court. A 
certain amount of outward pomp was still left to 
him, and even yet he failed to see the net which his 
own actions drew ever closer round him. 

He carried on ceaseless negotiations to regain his 
liberty, and in November, beginning to fear for his 
life, he escaped from London and fled to the Isle of 



CHARLES I. 29 

Wight, which had always been strongly royalist in 
its sympathies. Here his strict captivity began ; 
instead of being welcomed as a king, he was 
handed over to the custody of Colonel Ham- 
mond, a vigorous Parliamentarian. 

Anxious and nervous as he now was, how little 
even yet did he realise the gravity of the situation 
is shown in the letter he left at Hampton Court 
for Colonel Whalley, under whose care he had 
been : — 

"Colonel Whalley, — I have been so civilly used 
by you and Major Huntingdon, that I cannot but 
by this parting farewell acknowledge it under my 
hand, as also to desire the continuance of your 
courtesy by the protecting of any household stuff 
and moveables of all sorts which I leave behind 
me in this house, that they be neither spoiled nor 
embezzled. Only there are here three pictures 
which are not mine, that I desire you to restore ; 
to wit, my wife's picture, in blue, sitting in a 
chair, you must send to Mrs. Kirk ; my oldest 
daughter's picture, copied by Belcau, to the Coun- 
tess of Anglesey ; and my Lady Stanhope's picture 
to Lady Raleigh. There is a fourth, which I had 
almost forgot ; it is the original of my eldest 
daughter. It hangs in this chamber, over the 



30 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

board next the chimney, which you must send 
to my Lady Aubigny. So being confident that 
you wish my preservation and restitution, I rest, 
your friend, Charles Rex." 

Charles' conscientious care in small things is well 
shown in this letter. Had he been as just in the 
government of his people as he was in the distri- 
bution of his pictures, matters would have been 
very different both with him and with his people. 
His life at Carisbrook Castle was monotonous. He 
was allowed to take exercise in the court and on 
the walls of the castle, and to read and write, but 
beyond these relaxations his life was that of a 
prisoner. In his habits he had always been ab- 
stemious, rarely tasting anything before ten o'clock, 
eating only plain dishes, and drinking hardly any 
wine. Much of the day he now spent in prayer, 
for he was a most devoted Churchman, and one 
who found great comfort in his religious exer- 
cises. 

His favourite reading was theological : the Holy 
Scriptures, Hooker's "Ecclesiastical Polity," Bishop 
Andrews' " Sermons," and Dr. Sands' " Paraphrase 
upon King David's Psalms " ; but he also read 
poetry at times, and even wrote some verses him- 
self. In his books he more than once inscribed his 



CHARLES I. 31 

favourite Latin motto — sadly appropriate to his 
present position : " Dum spiro, spero." 

His chaplain and most of his servants had been 
dismissed after the discovery of more than one 
royalist attempt to bring about his escape from 
Carisbrook, but his faithful attendant, Sir Thomas 
Herbert, was with him, and gave him the comfort 
of a sympathetic care and service which only ceased 
with death. 

So the months went on. Within the prison 
walls were constant intrigues with royalists, with 
the Scotch, and with private friends ; among the 
Parliamentary party was ever growing anger at the 
perfidy of the King, and continually increasing 
demands for judgment upon him. 

He had rejected the offers of Parliament, the civil 
war had again broken out, and the Treaty of New- 
port in August 1648 had failed to bring about the 
hoped-for settlement. 

During the Council at Newport the King was 
brought from Carisbrook and lodged in the chief 
town of the Isle of Wight, where he held interviews 
with many of the gentlemen of the island, and 
" touched " several among the poor who were 
afflicted with the " King's evil." This was his last 
act of royal power. The anger of the Parlia- 
mentary army had been growing against him 



32 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

month by month, and each freshly discovered in- 
trigue on his part or on that of his friends fanned 
it to a yet hotter flame. 

On the 6th of December 1648, Colonel Pride, at 
the head of an armed force, entered the House of 
Commons, and drove forth from its walls all the 
Presbyterian members who still desired a peace- 
able settlement with the King. 

The Independent members left — the Rump, as 
they were styled — knew no will but that of the 
soldiers, and it was by them that the so-called 
High Court of Justice was appointed to bring 
Charles to public trial. The small number remain- 
ing of the House of Lords refused their consent to 
the trial, but of this Cromwell took scant heed. 

And so, before his own Ministers in Westminster 
Hall, the King of England was condemned as 
Charles Stuart, a murderer, a tyrant, and a traitor, 
and was sentenced to be beheaded. He refused 
to answer the charges brought against him ; he 
denied the right of existence of the court before 
which he stood, in words full of a dignity and 
courage which his actions had never shown ; he 
appealed against the violation of the English con- 
stitution, and declared himself the champion of 
those rights of the people, which throughout his 
reign he had ignored. 



CHARLES I. 33 

Mistaken, weak, and perfidious as he had been 
during his life, in those last days at least he showed 
himself every inch a king ; and in his public trial 
and his public death he appeared before men's eyes 
no more as the enemy of their liberties, the master 
whom they could no longer trust, but as the 
patient, high-souled royal captive, bereft of his 
earthly crown, and dying friendless and alone, 
with the calm dignity and humble patience of a 
noble Christian gentleman. The sentence was 
pronounced on January 27th, and carried out 
three days later. 

On Sunday, January 28th, he was permitted to 
go, under an escort, to hear his chosen spiritual 
adviser, the good Bishop Juxon, preach at St. 
James'. The text of the sermon was, " In the day 
when God shall judge the secrets of all men by 
Jesus Christ, according to my Gospel." 

His only requests had been to be allowed the 

ministrations of Bishop Juxon, and also a parting 

interview with his children. The two elder princes 

were with their mother abroad, but on Monday, 

January 29th, the Princess Elizabeth, who was 

thirteen at the time, and the Duke of Gloucester, 

who was four years younger, paid their last visit 

to their father. 

He kissed and blessed them both with loving 

C 



34 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

words, bidding them remember that henceforth 
their eldest brother Charles was their king, and 
bidding little Henry never to allow himself to be 
made king in his brother's place. 

He seemed pleased with the childish vehemence 
of the boy's answer : " I will be torn in pieces first!" 

To the Queen he sent a message of faithful love 
and tender farewell, and he bade his children 
remember that he died for the liberties of Eng- 
land, and for the Protestant faith, and commanded 
them solemnly to love one another and to forgive 
his enemies. 

He talked for a time with his young daughter, 
and sent by her blessings to his other children. 
"But, sweetheart," he added wistfully, "you will 
forget this." " No," the child replied with pas- 
sionate tears, " never while I live." And through 
the few short years of her life she kept her promise. 

The King would see none but his children. " I 
know," he said, " that my nephew, the Elector, will 
endeavour it, and other lords that love me, which 
I should take in good part, but my time is short 
and precious, and I am desirous to improve it the 
best I may in preparation. I hope they will not 
take it ill that none have access to me but my 
children. The best office they can do now is to 
pray for me." 



CHARLES I. 35 

On the last night of his life he slept peacefully, 
while his faithful attendant Herbert tossed uneasily 
on a pallet bed at his side, and in the morning he 
said cheerfully, " Herbert, this is my second mar- 
riage day ; I would be as trim as may be to-day, 
for before night I hope to be espoused to my 
blessed Jesus." To Charles his own death had 
the solemnity of a sacrament, and as such he 
prepared himself for it. He asked for an extra 
shirt, so that he might not tremble in the chill 
morning air, and by his enemies be deemed fearful. 
11 1 do not dread death," he said ; " death is not 
terrible to me. I bless my God I am prepared." 

Then, through the cold and frozen Park, between 
double lines of infantry, with drums beating and 
flags flying, the King walked calmly to meet his 
death at his own Palace of Whitehall. On one side 
of him walked Bishop Juxon, on the other Colonel 
Tomlinson, both with bared heads. 

Once during the journey he asked the soldiers to 
move faster. " I go," he said, " to strive for a 
heavenly crown with less solicitude than I have 
formerly encouraged my soldiers to fight for an 
earthly one." 

Soldiers on all sides kept back the people ; and 
when the King stepped from the window of the 
banqueting-room in the Palace of Whitehall on to 



36 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

the scaffold which had been erected in front of it, 
the mass of soldiers was so thick that none beyond 
could hear his last words. They were addressed 
to Colonel Tomlinson : " For," said the King, " I 
shall be very little heard of anybody here ; I shall 
therefore speak a word unto you here. Indeed," 
he went on to say, " I could hold my peace very 
well, if I did not think that holding my peace would 
make some men think that I did submit to the guilt 
as well as to the punishment. But I think it is 
my duty to God first," he went on, "and to my 
country, for to clear myself both as an honest man 
and a good king, and a good Christian." Speech 
was never easy to him, but it seemed as if in his 
heroic meeting with death he conquered this 
natural failing, as he did all others. He as- 
serted his innocence of all the charges brought 
against him ; he declared that his desire had always 
been for the liberty of the people, and that what he 
had resisted had been the arbitrary power of the 
sword. u Sirs, it was for this that now I am come 
here. If I would have given way to an arbitrary 
way for to have all laws changed according to the 
power of the sword, I needed not to have come 
here ; and therefore I tell you — and I pray God 
it be not laid to your charge — that I am the 
Martyr of the People." 



CHARLES I. 37 

He spoke again with the good bishop, prayed 
earnestly, but only for a short time, then laid him- 
self down, and placed his head upon the low block 
with the calmness with which he had placed it on 
the pillow the night before. 

Whatever were the failings of Charles Stuart, 
King of England, he was not wanting in personal 
valour, or in deep religious devotion. 



CHAPTER II 

OLIVER CROMWELL 

On the 29th of April 1599, in St. John's Church, 
Huntingdon, was baptized Oliver, the fifth son of 
a quiet country gentleman, Mr. Robert Cromwell ; 
and in the bare bracing atmosphere of the eastern 
counties, with surroundings as ordinary and un- 
romantic as were those of Shakspere's youth at 
Stratford, the boy Oliver passed his childhood, 
youth, and early manhood. The head of the 
family was his uncle, Sir Oliver Cromwell, the 
Knight of Hinchinbrook, whose father, Sir Henry, 
had once enjoyed the costly privilege of entertaining 
Queen Elizabeth during one of her Royal pro- 
gresses. The younger branch of the family owned 
a comfortable estate at Huntingdon, and there it 
was that Robert Cromwell and his wife Elizabeth, 
the daughter of William Steward of Ely, spent the 
first years of their married life. 

As in the case of Shakspere, little is known of 
the boyhood of Oliver Cromwell. 

His family were ordinary well-to-do gentlefolks, 
38 




Oliver Cromwell. 

From the original in Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge. 



OLIVER CROMWELL 39 

and he probably lived much the same life as did 
thousands of other lads at the time, particularly 
as he showed no more than ordinary ability until 
he had passed his first youth. Various prophecies 
are extant, and have been often repeated, pointing 
to a great future and unusual promotion for the 
boy, and wonderful tales have been told of his 
hair-breadth escapes from death in early years ; 
but such stories constantly grow up round the 
memory of great men, and must be taken for no 
more than they are worth. 

Cromwell received his education at the free 
school of Huntingdon, and there he came under 
the stern influence and training of Dr. Thomas 
Beard, a severe and somewhat pedantic Puritan 
schoolmaster. The spoiling of the child which 
comes from the sparing of the rod had no part 
at that time in the training of the young, and Dr. 
Beard, though a good and firm friend to his 
industrious scholar, corrected him constantly, we 
are told, " with a diligent hand and careful eye " ; 
nor was the birch of those days an instrument of 
discipline to be despised. 

At the age of seventeen Oliver left school, and 
went to Cambridge, where he entered Sidney 
Sussex College on April 23rd, 1616, as a fellow- 
commoner. Here again he was under strong 



40 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

Puritan influences ; the master, Dr. Samuel Ward, 
carried on Dr. Beard's training even to detail, 
for he compelled his scholars to hear sermons at 
regular periods, and also to reproduce the same, 
which, when they failed to do to his satisfaction, 
he had them publicly whipped in the College Hal!. 

Under such teachers Cromwell grew up with 
a strong respect for two things, Puritanism and 
discipline, and to the furtherance of these his 
life was given. 

At college he was diligent and orderly, but more 
given to athletic exercises than to any special intel- 
lectual studies. 

His training at home had been that of a country 
gentleman, and it had encouraged his natural love 
of horses, and of manly outdoor sports, such as 
riding, hawking, and hunting. One royalist bio- 
grapher says of him that "he was easily satiated 
with study, taking more delight in horse and field 
exercise " ; and another tells us that he was u more 
famous for his exercises in the fields than in the 
schools, being one of the chief matchmakers and 
players of football, cudgels, or any other boisterous 
sport or game." 

If this were true, Cromwell no doubt enjoyed 
among his fellow-students at Cambridge a fore- 
taste of the same popularity which, through his 



OLIVER CROMWELL 41 

soldiers, enabled him in after years to bend Eng- 
land to his will. In the month of June, 1617, his 
father died, and he left Cambridge without a degree, 
and returned to Huntingdon to take up the position 
of head of the house, in the home which he shared 
with his mother and six sisters. 

Most of his sisters married soon, but his mother 
lived with him throughout her life, and died in the 
Palace of Whitehall, with the beautiful motherly 
blessing on her lips : " The Lord cause His face to 
shine upon you, and comfort you in all your 
adversities, and enable you to do great things for 
the glory of the most High God, and to be a relief 
unto His people. My dear son, I leave my heart 
with thee : good night." Though living in a 
palace, and bearing the proud title of Lord 
Protector of England, he was to her dying eyes 
only the beloved son Oliver, the boy she had taught 
to pray at her knee, the only one of her sons who 
had lived beyond his babyhood. 

On August 22nd, 1620, in St. Giles' Church, 
Cripplegate, the marriage of Oliver Cromwell was 
solemnised, with Elizabeth, daughter of Sir James 
Bouchier, a wealthy city merchant. Judging by 
her portrait she must have been a suitable wife for 
him, as far as appearance went ; her kindly sensible 
face, with large clear eyes, and somewhat massive 



42 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

features, was cast much in the same mould as his 
own. In her picture she wears her back hair in 
the ringlets which Queen Henrietta Maria had 
introduced as the prevailing fashion, but instead of 
the few soft curls on the forehead, which are so 
becoming in the Queen's portraits, Elizabeth 
Cromwell's hair is drawn stiffly back, and makes a 
severe line around her high forehead. 

Cromwell himself is thus described, in later days, 
by his own steward, John Maidston : w His body 
was well compact and strong, his stature under six 
foot (I believe about two inches), his head so 
shaped as you might see it a storehouse and a shop 
both of a vast treasury of natural parts. His 
temper exceeding fiery, as I have known, but the 
flame of it kept down for the most part, or soon 
allayed with those moral endowments he had. He 
was naturally compassionate towards objects in 
distress, even to an effeminate measure; though 
God had made him a heart, wherein was left little 
room for fear but what was due to himself, of 
which there was a large proportion, yet did he 
exceed in tenderness towards sufferers. A larger 
soul, I think, hath seldom dwelt in house of clay 
than his was." His outward appearance hardly 
needs description, so well known are his portraits 
to most English people : he wore his light brown 



OLIVER CROMWELL 43 

hair in curling locks on his shoulders, according 
to the custom of the day ; his eyes were of a bluish 
grey colour, his mouth large and firm, and his nose 
strikingly long and thick, so that a friend once said 
jestingly to him, u If you prove false, I will never 
trust a fellow with a big nose again." 

His dress was plain to severity ; he is generally 
described as wearing clothes of black cloth, brown 
or russet coloured, with a narrow linen band 
round his neck, instead of the lace collar so often 
seen in Vandyck's portraits of men of his time. 

So, filling up the details as we would from our 
own imaginations, must we picture Oliver Crom- 
well, a plain, honest, soberly-clad country gentle- 
man, spending his time in farming his lands round 
Huntingdon, and afterwards at St. Ives, pondering, 
as he stumped through the boggy marshy grounds, 
on the religious questions of the day, and exercising 
a shrewd just influence on his neighbours and his 
own household. 

Throughout his life, it was with the religious 
side of every question that his mind was chiefly 
concerned, and it seems to have been during the 
quiet years after his marriage that there came 
to him the experience spoken of as conver- 
sion, a sudden awakening to a sense of his own 
dependence on the Almighty God, and of the 



44 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

mercy and the judgment alike of God towards His 
people. 

In the year 1638, in a letter to his cousin, Mrs. 
St. John, he describes the religious experience 
through which he had passed : — 

"You know what my manner of life hath been. 
Oh, I lived in and loved darkness, and hated light ; 
I was a chief, the chief of sinners. This is true, 
I hated godliness, yet God had mercy on me . . . 
yet the Lord forsaketh me not. Though He do 
prolong, yet He will, I trust, bring me to His 
tabernacle, to His resting-place." 

The Calvinistic creed of the day was a stern 
one, but it was that which appealed to the nature 
of such a man as Oliver, living at the time he 
did. 

At this period, while his own soul was vexed by 
religious communings, he was building up the 
foundation of his future popularity in the Eastern 
counties by acting as champion to the people 
round St. Ives against the infringement of their 
rights in the matter of Common Lands. Little 
did he or they think how important this influence 
would prove to him later on. 

Carlyle writes of him at this time : " How he lived 
at St. Ives ; how he saluted men on the streets ; 
read Bibles ; sold cattle ; and walked with heavy 



OLIVER CROMWELL 45 

footfall and many thoughts, through the Market 
Green or old narrow lanes in St. Ives, by the 
shore of the black Ouse River — shall be left to the 
reader's imagination. There is in this man talent 
for farming ; there are thoughts enough, thoughts 
bounded by the River Ouse, thoughts that go be- 
yond Eternity, and a great black sea of things 
that he has never yet been able to think." 

He seems to have been a great reader, while he 
had leisure, both of religious books and of those 
on military subjects, and to his enthusiastic study 
of the campaigns of the soldier hero Gustavus 
Adolphus may be due in part his own marvellous 
powers as a military leader without any military 
training. It is easy to imagine him pondering over 
the tactics of the gallant Swedish King as he 
inspected his crops, and supervised his labourers 
in those prosaic Cambridgeshire fields. 

He had been elected member for Huntingdon, 
and sat during Charles' third Parliament, and also 
during the Short Parliament, but it was in the 
Long Parliament that his position became one of 
importance, owing to the fact that his cousin 
Hampden was only second in leadership therein 
to Pym himself. 

It was for the most part on religious matters 
that his early speeches were made. 



46 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

On the sixth day of the session of the Long 
Parliament he gave an address to the House on 
behalf of a youth called Lilburn, once secretary to 
Prynne ; and of Cromwell, as he appeared to his 
fellow-members at the time, Sir Philip Warwick 
gives this description: "I came into the House one 
morning, well clad; and perceived a gentleman 
speaking, whom I knew not, very ordinarily 
apparelled ; for it was a plain cloth suit, which 
seemed to have been made by an ill country- 
tailor ; his linen was plain, and not very clean ; 
and I remember a speck or two of blood upon his 
little band, which was not much larger than his 
collar. His hat was without a hatband. His 
stature was of a good size ; his sword stuck close 
to his side : his countenance swollen and reddish, 
his voice sharp and untuneable, and his eloquence 
full of fervour. For the subject-matter would not 
bear much of reason ; it being on behalf of a 
servant of Mr. Prynne's, who had dispersed Libels. 
I sincerely profess, it lessened much my reverence 
unto that great council, for this gentleman was 
very much hearkened unto." 

This is Oliver as he appeared in the eyes of a 
royalist knight, who evidently found it hard to 
believe that much merit could go with ill-cut 
country-made clothes, and a soiled linen collar. 



OLIVER CROMWELL 47 

Three days after the fatal move on the King's 
part of impeaching the five members, it was Crom- 
well who urged that the country should be put 
into a position of defence, and so that saddest of 
all divisions took place in England, that of two 
parties in a Civil War. " I could never satisfy 
myself," wrote Cromwell in 1644, "of the justness 
of this war, but from the authority of the Parlia- 
ment to maintain itself in its rights." And ten 
years later he wrote again : " Religion was not the 
thing at first contested for, but God brought it to 
that issue at last." 

The causes of the war were indeed many, but 
looking back in the light of succeeding years, one 
is almost tempted to say that, considering the 
state of the Church at the time, the two inevitable 
causes were the characters of Charles I. and 
Oliver Cromwell. 

So England ranged itself, either on the King's 
side, or on that of the Parliament. 

There were men of noble birth in the Parlia- 
mentary ranks, but the general mass of the gentry 
sided with the King, as did also the universities 
and most of the cathedral cities such as York and 
Chester, while London was the great stronghold 
of the Parliament, together with the other im- 
portant manufacturing towns. But in all parts of 



48 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

the kingdom there were families in every rank of 
life fighting, some on the one side, some on the 
other ; in Cromwell's own family, his uncle Sir 
Oliver and his cousin Henry both fought under 
the royal flag. 

It was a terrible war for England, but it was 
a just one, and it was waged on the whole with 
mercy and moderation ; and with the spirit, at 
least among many of the more serious leaders, 
which moved Sir William Waller when he wrote 
to his old friend, whom he was called upon to 
face in battle, " The God of peace in His good 
time send us peace, and in the meantime fit us 
to receive it." 

Cromwell was generous in his private contribu- 
tion of both men and money, for the army which 
Essex was to command ; he was not a rich man, 
but he gave ^500 to the fund for raising an army, 
sent ;£ioo worth of arms to his constituents at 
Cambridge, and furnished a troop of sixty horse- 
men at his own expense. 

Oxford was from first to last the stronghold of 
the King, but the University plate at Cambridge 
was seized by Cromwell for the Parliament, and 
three heads of colleges, whom he thought safer 
out of their sphere of action, he sent as prisoners 
to London. 



OLIVER CROMWELL 49 

The Parliamentary forces possessed easier and 
more legitimate methods of raising money than 
did the King, who was crippled throughout the 
war by his want of funds ; and the fact that the 
fleet sided with his enemies prevented his easily 
getting supplies from abroad. 

Throughout the whole of the first campaign 
Cromwell fought under Essex, and during that 
time his keen insight showed him what was the 
real need in the Parliamentary army, for he pos- 
sessed to an unusual degree that quality in which 
Charles I. was so fatally deficient, that of seeing 
things as they really were, not as he wished them 
to be. 

He urged the raising of fresh troops, and of their 
being drawn from men of a different stamp from 
those now forming the larger part of the army. 

He spoke to his cousin Hampden on the matter. 
" I told him," he says, " I would be serviceable 
to him in bringing such men in as I thought had 
a spirit that would do something in the work." 
"Your troops," said I, "are most of them old, 
decayed serving-men, tapsters, and such kind of 
fellows ; do you think that the spirits of such 
base, mean fellows will ever be able to encounter 
gentlemen that have honour, and courage, and 
resolution in them ? You must get men of a 

D 



50 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

spirit that is likely to go as far as gentlemen will 
go, or you will be beaten still." 

He saw clearly the point in which the Parlia- 
mentary army was inferior to that of the King, 
and he was also ready to undertake the task of 
bringing about a change which at first appeared 
to others to be impossible. The formation of the 
band of Ironsides was the result of Cromwell's 
insight throughout the early months of the Civil 
War. 

So the Eastern Association was formed, which 
banded together for mutual defence the five eastern 
counties where Cromwell's influence was strong, 
and he was in all details its moving spirit. 

That a man of over forty, even allowing for 
the fact that he had read a certain amount of 
military history, should train himself to be first 
an excellent soldier, and then an able and suc- 
cessful general, is proof of the indomitable will 
possessed by Cromwell. 

He saw what was needed, and then set himself 
to bring it about, without a moment's quailing 
before the difficulties to be encountered. 

And the New Model Army was formed on very 
different principles from those which had brought 
together the troops of "old, decayed serving-men 
and tapsters." 



OLIVER CROMWELL 51 

In Cromwell's own troop, which rapidly grew 
from a small band of horsemen to regiment after 
regiment, he would have none but God-fearing 
men, of honest lives, and " greater understanding 
than common soldiers." " I had rather have," he 
said, " a plain, russet-coated captain that knows 
what he fights for and loves what he knows, than 
that which you call ' a gentleman,' and is nothing 
else. I honour a gentleman that is so indeed. . . . 
It may be it provokes some spirits to see such plain 
men made captains of horse. It had been well that 
men of honour and birth had entered into these 
employments — but why do they not appear ? But 
seeing it was necessary the work must go on, better 
plain men than none." 

The discipline exacted in his troop was as rigid 
as that which he had himself undergone at school 
and college : no plundering, swearing, or drinking 
were permitted, bad language meant a heavy fine, 
and drunkenness an afternoon in the stocks. 

Besides this he instilled into his men the love 
of horses which was his from birth, so that each 
trooper was compelled to give his beast the care 
which Cromwell gave his men : these he clothed 
and armed better than their fellows, and above 
everything else he set before them a lofty ideal 
of what a soldier should be, and gave them an 



52 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

example which never failed of the virtues which 
he preached. 

Firmness of purpose, absolute belief in the 
righteousness of their cause, self-denial, courage, 
and endurance, so he preached, and so he prac- 
tised, from the day when he first held a pistol to 
the day he laid it down victorious. 

And so it was that Clarendon says, u that differ- 
ence was observed shortly from the beginning of 
the war : that though the King's troops prevailed 
in the charge, and routed those they charged, they 
never rallied themselves again in order, nor could 
be brought to make a second charge again the 
same day, whereas Cromwell's troops, if they pre- 
vailed, or though they were beaten and routed, 
presently rallied again, and stood in good order 
till they received new orders." 

This discipline became after a time automatic, 
but many of the troops were filled with Cromwell's 
own belief that God was specially with them in 
every battle. 

This was his constant assurance and refrain after 
each fight, and by his enemies is repeated as a 
proof of his hypocrisy. " God follows us with 
encouragements," he writes. " They come in 
season ; as if God should say, ' Up and be doing, 
and I will stand by you and help you.'" Of his 



OLIVER CROMWELL 53 

feeling before Naseby he says, " I could not, riding 
alone about my business, but smile out to God 
in praises, in assurance of victory, because God 
would, by things that are not, bring to naught 
things that are. Of which I had great assurance, 
and God did it." After the taking of Winchester 
he writes to the Speaker, " You see God is not 
weary in doing you good. His favour to you is 
as visible, when He comes by His power upon the 
hearts of your enemies, making them quit places 
of strength to you, as when He gives courage to 
your soldiers to attempt hard things." 

In his worst difficulties he described himself as 
u comfortable in spirit and having much hope in 
the Lord," and nowhere can be seen a nobler defi- 
nition of the spirit which should animate an army 
than in his speech during the Debate on the Pro- 
posals. 

" We have all of us," he says, " done our parts, 
not affrighted with difficulties, one as well as an- 
other, and I hope all purpose henceforward to do 
so still. I do not think that any man here wants 
courage to do that which becomes an honest man 
and an Englishman to do. But we speak as men 
that desire to have the fear of God before our eyes, 
and men that may not resolve to do that which we 
do in the power of a fleshly strength, but to lay this 



54 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

as the foundation of all our actions, to do that 
which is the will of God." 

In whatever light we regard Cromwell, whether 
as religious fanatic, hypocrite, or heaven - gifted 
military leader, we must see that his system worked 
well ; that it produced out of the chaos of the Par- 
liamentary army such a force as was able to sub- 
due the trained soldiers and well-born military 
leaders, who ranged themselves by hundreds be- 
neath the banner of the King, and who, in the 
beginning of the struggle, seemed to have over- 
whelming advantages on their side. Of Cromwell's 
personal courage there was no doubt — he led his 
soldiers into the hottest fight ; though wounded 
several times he was never severely hurt. 

On January 2nd, 1644, he was appointed Lieu- 
tenant-General of the Army of the Eastern Associa- 
tion, and he entirely dominated the "meek sweet" 
Earl of Manchester who was in command over him. 

The King was now receiving help from the 
Irish Catholics, and the Parliamentary party had 
united with the Scotch Covenanters, and had 
welcomed a Scotch army as allies on their side. 

On July 2nd, 1644, was fought the battle of 
Marston Moor, which scattered Rupert's cavaliers 
"like a little dust," and entirely broke the King's 
power in the north. 



OLIVER CROMWELL 55 

Perhaps one of the most interesting of Crom- 
well's letters is that written "before York" on 
the 5th of July, three days after the battle, to his 
brother-in-law, Colonel Valentine Walton, whose 
son had fallen in the fight. The opening of the 
letter contains information as to the battle, then 
the writer ceases to be the successful general, and 
becomes instead the kindly relative full of sym- 
pathy on the death of a promising young nephew : 
he begins by ascribing the victory to God's favour 
on the " godly party." 

"We never charged but we routed the enemy. 
. . . God made them as stubble to our swords." 

And then he goes on to say, " Sir, God hath 
taken away your eldest son by a cannon-shot. It 
brake his leg. We were necessitated to have it 
cut off, whereof he died. 

" Sir, you know my own trials this way, but the 
Lord supported me with this, That the Lord took 
him into the happiness we all pant for and live 
for. There is your precious child full of glory, 
never to know sin or sorrow any more. He was 
a gallant young man, exceedingly gracious. God 
give you His comfort. Before his death he was 
so full of comfort that to Frank Russel and myself 
he could not express it, ' It was so great above his 
pain.' This he said to us. Indeed it was admir- 



56 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

able. A little after, he said, One thing lay upon 
his spirit. I asked him, What that was ? He told 
me it was, That God had not suffered him to be 
any more the executioner of His enemies. At his 
fall, his horse being killed with the bullet, and as 
I am informed three horses more, I am told he 
bid them, Open to the right and left, that he might 
see the rogues run. Truly he was exceedingly 
beloved in the army, of all that knew him. But 
few knew him ; for he was a precious young man, 
fit for God. You have cause to bless the Lord. 
He is a glorious saint in heaven ; wherein you 
ought exceedingly to rejoice. Let this drink-up 
your sorrow ; seeing these are not feigned words 
to comfort you, but the thing is so real and 
undoubted a truth. You may do all things by 
the strength of Christ. Seek that, and you shall 
easily bear your trial. Let this public mercy to 
the Church of God make you to forget your 
private sorrow. The Lord be your strength : so 
prays your truly faithful and loving brother, 
Oliver Cromwell." 

This letter must, indeed, have been a comfort 
to the stricken parents, worded as it was with 
loving thought for the details each would value 
most. Can one not fancy the sturdy colonel father, 
brushing the hot tears from his eyes so as to see 



OLIVER CROMWELL 57 

more clearly the proud words, " he was exceedingly 
beloved in the army," and the soldierly utterance 
of the dying lad, whom mortal pain did not con- 
quer. "Open . . . that I may see the rogues 
run," and then the bowed head of the weeping 
mother, lifted with something akin to gladness, 
at the thought that at the last her boy's " comfort " 
had been above his pain. Truly, the general who 
penned that letter, in the full flush of victory, had 
a heart instinct with human sympathy, such as is 
not always joined to "godly piety" such as his! 

It was at the battle of Marston Moor that Prince 
Rupert gave Cromwell his famous name of u Iron- 
sides " ; the Parliamentary success had been almost 
entirely owing to Cromwell and his troops, and 
more than ever after this battle did the great 
general see the need of a complete reorganisation 
of the army. 

The Earl of Manchester, in spite of his " meek- 
ness and sweetness," accused Cromwell of being 
a quarrelsome and obstinate subordinate, but 
Cromwell was too large-minded, and too much 
in earnest in his desire for military reform, to heed 
personal attacks, and he did not rest until the New 
Model Army had been formed according to the 
principles he advocated. 

Instead of various armies, fighting under different 



58 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

conditions, the Parliamentary forces were formed 
into one well-paid sternly disciplined army, the 
command of which was given to Sir Thomas 
Fairfax, a man at once both wise and warlike. 
Cromwell had led the debate in the House of 
Commons on the subject, with the fearless inde- 
pendence characteristic of his whole public life. 

" It is now a time to speak," he said, " or forever 
hold the tongue. The important occasion now, 
is no less than to save a nation, out of a bleeding, 
nay almost dying condition." And there can be 
no doubt that it was he who saved it. He was 
the idol of his own soldiers, but always sought to 
put their loyalty to him on higher grounds than 
that of mere personal devotion. In the same 
debate he affirmed : " I can speak this for my own 
soldiers, that they look not upon me, but upon 
you, and for you they will fight, and live and die 
in your cause ; and if others be of that mind that 
they are of, you need not fear them. They do 
not idolise me, but look upon the cause they fight 
for. You may lay upon them what commands 
you please, they will obey your commands in that 
cause they fight for." 

So the New Model was formed, and Cromwell 
was made lieutenant-general, because, as Fairfax 
said, of "the general esteem and affection which 



OLIVER CROMWELL 59 

he hath both with the officers and soldiers of this 
whole army, his own personal worth and ability 
for the employment, his great care, diligence, 
courage, and faithfulness in the services you have 
already employed him in, with the constant pre- 
sence and blessing of God that have accompanied 
him." On the 14th of June 1645, about six miles 
from Market Harborough, was fought the battle 
of Naseby ; there the King's army was routed and 
scattered, and among the plunder taken were 
private papers from the royal tent, which disclosed 
lamentable false dealing and secret negotiations 
with France, Denmark, and the Irish Catholics on 
the part of Charles and his advisers. Cromwell 
wrote to Lenthall, the Speaker of the House of 
Commons, giving details of the battle ; of his 
soldiers he speaks, as always, with the proud 
affection of a father. " Honest men served you 
faithfully in this action. Sir, they are trusty ; I 
beseech you, in the name of God, not to discourage 
them." 

It was hardly perhaps Cromwell's fault that the 
soldiers whom he had trained to know their own 
value, should gradually become the ruling power 
in England, and should own no master but 
himself. 

So the first Civil War ran its course. Cromwell 



60 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

was willing enough to come to terms with the 
King, but the continued failure of Charles to 
realise his true position, joined to his inherent 
love of crooked dealing, made an amicable settle- 
ment impossible. 

Of Cromwell's private life during these busy 
years we have little record. He had left Ely, 
and moved to London, where he lived first in 
Drury Lane, and then in Westminster. Of his 
four sons one had died before the war began, but 
the other three had been given to the cause as 
willingly as he gave all else. Oliver had died 
while fighting under his father, Richard and Henry 
served throughout the war. He had the pleasure 
of keeping two of his daughters at home for some 
time, but Bridget, the eldest, had married General 
Ireton, and Elizabeth, her father's favourite, be- 
came the wife of John Claypole, a country squire. 

In the spring of 1647, and again one year later, 
Cromwell was very ill, so ill that in March 1647, 
he wrote on his recovery to Sir Thomas Fairfax : 
" I received in myself the sentence of death, that 
I might learn to trust in Him that raiseth from 
the dead, and have no confidence in the flesh." 
And in the next year he wrote : a I find this only 
good, to love the Lord and His poor despised 
people, to do for them, and to be ready to suffer 



OLIVER CROMWELL 61 

with them ; and he that is found worthy of this 
hath obtained great favour from the Lord." 

In 1648 the second Civil War broke out, and 
while Cromwell marched northwards against the 
Scotch Royalists, and utterly routed them, the 
treaty of Newport was being drawn up in the Isle 
of Wight, where Charles was still a prisoner. 

Then came the military petitions against the 
Treaty, and on December 6th, 1648, Colonel Pride 
marched into the House with a band of musketeers 
at his heels, and drove forth the Presbyterian 
members who were still in favour of coming to 
terms with the King. " Pride's Purge " the act 
was called, and it sealed the death warrant of 
Charles. The army and Cromwell agreed that 
he must die, and no power in England was strong 
enough to say them nay. 

So, grand figure that he is, the stain of a 
regicide rests always on the memory of Oliver 
Cromwell. 

The King died through Cromwell's instru- 
mentality, and Cromwell spent the rest of his life 
in <a conscientious endeavour to build up again 
the institutions of the country such as they had 
been in earlier days. 

By the sword he won his power, and by the 
sword he kept it; but he used it well. He brought 



62 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

England back from a state of anarchy, and he 
laboured unceasingly to restore righteousness and 
justice in the land. His hands were stained with 
the blood of his King, but they were pure from 
other stains, those of false dealing, greed and sin, 
such as have defiled many rulers as great as he. 
And everywhere he saw the H Hand of God " 
working through him for England's weal. 

One of his first acts after the King's death was 
to cross over into Ireland, and try to bring some 
order into that unhappy country. But the Irish 
were never to his taste, and his wholesale slaughter 
at Drogheda and Wexford were political mistakes, 
though at the time they brought about a state of 
superficial quiet. It was typical of the savage 
side of religion at that time that he could write 
of the massacre at Drogheda as "a righteous judg- 
ment of God upon those barbarous wretches." 

Cromwell had far more in common with the 
Scotch than with the Irish, and he steadily pur- 
sued his advantages north of the Tweed against 
the young King Charles II., until his final victory 
against him at Worcester, on September 3rd, 165 1. 

Charles II. was one of the few Royalists to es- 
cape from the castle, and though a price of .£1000 
was put upon his head, and a severe penalty im- 
posed on any one who should give him shelter, 



OLIVER CROMWELL 63 

for the honour of England be it remembered 
that not one was found base enough to betray 
the fugitive king. He escaped by night in a boat 
from Brighton to France, and Cromwell marched 
into London in triumph, and was greeted on all 
sides as a victorious monarch. 

On the 16th of December 1653 he was made 
Protector of the Kingdom. He and Parliament 
were to rule together, the two powers so arranged 
as to balance one another ; but the real power 
was still with the army, of which Cromwell was 
the head. Then came the religious settlement, 
of which it is difficult to write here, so burning 
are the questions it involved : it was the reaction 
from Laud's dominion, and perhaps it went further 
from strict justice in the one direction than his had 
done in the other. Freedom to worship God as 
they would was granted to all but Roman Catholics 
and High Churchmen, and the English Sunday 
became for the first time a day in which the inter- 
vals of public worship were not filled with social 
intercourse and amusements ; and it is difficult 
for lovers of art and architecture to think calmly 
of the wholesale destruction wrought by Cromwell 
and his soldiers throughout the country among 
the grand old churches and abbeys once raised 
by holy hands to the glory of God. 



64 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

It has been said that among military despots 
it is Cromwell's special glory to have the best 
claim to be considered an honest man, but it has 
been also said by the same historian that it was 
well for England in the long centuries of her 
history that she numbered but one Oliver Crom- 
well among her rulers. 

The Puritans were zealous in the cause of edu- 
cation, and though the Protector's own interest 
was chiefly centred in the religious side of it, yet 
he gave encouragement to various poets and 
learned men, and held the Chancellorship of the 
University of Oxford from 165 1 to 1657. 

His ideas on the treatment of university affairs 
were more military than academical, if we may 
judge from his letter to the Committee of Gresham 
College, where a professorship was vacant. 

" Gentlemen, — We understanding that you have 
appointed an election this afternoon of a Geometry 
Professor in Gresham College, we desire you to 
suspend the same for some time, till we shall have 
an opportunity to speak with some of you in order 
to that business. I rest, your loving friend, 

"Oliver P." 

For five years he ruled England as Lord Pro- 
tector, steadily refusing to bear the title of king. 



OLIVER CROMWELL 65 

By his stern but just rule he restored peace to 
the stricken country, and made England respected 
again by her foreign neighbours. Men did not 
love his rule, but they accepted it, because it 
brought about the order they desired. But his 
life was a hard one, and the difficulties only in- 
creased with time, for there were some questions 
which could not be settled by military methods, 
and his success depended too much on his own 
personal abilities. 

On June 26th, 1657, Cromwell was for the second 
time installed as Lord Protector, this time not only 
as the nominee of the army. The ceremony was in 
Westminster Abbey, and partook somewhat of the 
solemnity of a coronation : the Speaker hung over 
his shoulders an ermine-lined robe of purple velvet, 
and placed in his hands a golden sceptre, a sword 
was girded at his side, and a Bible presented to 
him. But his reign of toil and triumph was nearing 
its close. 

His health had suffered for some time from the 
unceasing strain of such a life, and his increasing 
difficulties with Parliament aggravated the attacks of 
fever or ague from which he suffered. He was far 
too clear-sighted not to know how much his rule 
had depended on his own force of character, and 
how little of it would remain when he was gone. 



66 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

His love for his country was his deepest feeling, 
and he struggled for her sake against his increasing 
weakness, just as for her sake he had fought all 
other foes. 

On the 6th of August, 1658, he lost his dearly- 
loved daughter, Mrs. Claypole, and was much 
broken down with sorrow at the blow. 

The attacks of fever recurred. The Quaker Fox, 
who met him riding at the head of his body-guard 
in Hampton Court Park, declared : " Before I came 
to him I felt a waft of death go forth against 
him, and when I came to him he looked like a 
dead man." 

He wanted to live, and to the last he tried to 
dispute the verdict of the physicians ; but he had 
met the one enemy against whom he had no 
power. 

It was to the Palace of Whitehall that they 
brought him, thinking the change might do him 
good, and it was there that his mighty spirit 
wrestled for days in prayer with the God whom 
he had faithfully served throughout the fifty-nine 
years of his life. "For God's cause," and "God's 
people," he prayed continually ; it was not of him- 
self he thought at the last, not of his wife or chil- 
dren, but of the people for whom his strength had 
been spent. "Thou hast made me, though very 



OLIVER CROMWELL 67 

unworthy, a mean instrument to do them some 
good and Thee service. . . . Lord, however Thou 
dost dispose of me, continue and go on to do 
good for them. Give them consistency of judg- 
ment, one heart, and mutual love, and go on to 
deliver them. . . . Teach those who look too 
much upon Thy instruments to depend more upon 
Thyself. . . . And pardon the folly of this short 
prayer, even for Jesus Christ's sake, and give us a 
good night if it be Thy pleasure." 

Within the palace the stricken household waited 
for the end, while without a terrible storm raged; 
the lightning playing on the darkened windows, 
and the thunder at times drowned by its crashes 
the feeble voice of the dying man. 

So fierce a storm had hardly been known in 
England ; trees fell, and houses had their very roofs 
torn from them. And while the Puritans prayed in 
awestruck sorrow for the great spirit in its passing 
hour, the mocking Royalists declared that the 
"devil had come to fetch his own." 

But neither prayers nor gibes were heeded by 
the dying patriot in his lonely death-struggle — 
lonely, though in the midst of his family, for none 
could share feelings such as his. 

The storm passed, and he lay quiet, breathing 
faint words of prayer to the last. "I would be 



68 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

willing," he said, " to live to be further serviceable 
to God and His people, but my work is done." 
And so he died, in the afternoon of September 3rd, 
the anniversary of his victories at Dunbar and 
Worcester. 

Clarendon has called him a "brave bad man." 
Carlyle says of him he was " not a man of false- 
hoods, but a man of truths " ; and of his own life 
he said, with the same simplicity with which he 
prayed at the end for a ** good night," " I have 
been called to several employments in this nation, 
and I did endeavour to discharge the duty of an 
honest man to God and His people's interest." 



CHAPTER III 

THE CAVALIERS I PRINCE RUPERT, MONTROSE, 
AND GORING 

Around the name of Cavalier lingers much of the 
spirit of Romance — that spirit which in earlier days 
breathed in the actions of Percival and Galahad 
and their brethren of the Table Round ; the spirit of 
chivalry, reverence, and loyalty, which was charac- 
teristic of the gallant Englishmen who fought the 
dying cause of absolute monarchy under Charles I. 

With such a king the failure of their immediate 
object was inevitable, but not the death of the 
ideals for which they fought. 

Each side felt Heaven above it, but the Cavaliers 

had the easier part, for they went out in simple 

loyalty to give themselves and all they had for 

" King and Faith " with the unreasoning fidelity of 

the sailor Grenville ; while the Puritans stood grim 

and stern, in the strength of newly awakened 

views, to wrest, if possible, the much-abused power 

from the hands of their lawful king. 

Of the Cavaliers Macaulay writes that they 
69 



70 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

fought " not for a treacherous King or an intolerant 
Church, but for the old banner that had waved 
over the heads of their fathers, and for the altars 
at which they had received the hands of their 
brides. With many of the vices of the Round 
Table they had also many of its virtues — courtesy, 
generosity, veracity, tenderness and respect for 
women. They had also far more of profound and 
polite learning than the Puritans ; their manners 
were more engaging, their tempers more amiable, 
their tastes more elegant, and their households 
more cheerful." 

By the gallantry with which they followed the 
hapless Stuart race, through good report and evil, 
through danger, false dealing, and failure, they 
have kept alive in English history the noblest side 
of " our loyal passion for our temperate kings " ; 
and that their rule is temperate was decided in 
those years of bitter struggle, when men of one 
race and often of one family, divided by the line 
between Cavalier and Puritan, fought out the in- 
evitable conflict on the blood - stained fields of 
Naseby and Marston Moor. " Heroic and earnest 
men strove faithfully on either side, with tongue 
and sword, and prayer and blood, for what they 
deemed to be the truth. Each found, as truthful 
and earnest men will ever find, however ranged on 



THE CAVALIERS 71 

different sides, that their ultimate object had been 
the same. Each found, not the conquest that his 
human nature strove for, but the victory that his 
higher nature yearned for : yet he found it in 
defeat. The Cavalier saw much that he had been 
taught to reverence struck down, buried, and put 
away for ever in the grave of the Stuarts. The 
Roundhead beheld his glorious visions of liberty 
eventuating in fierce anarchy and final despotism, 
from which he was content to seek refuge even in 
the Restoration." 

And the saddest side of Cavalier life is that under 
Charles II. The Royalist knight under Charles I. 
is a grand figure, with flowing curls and brave 
apparel, plumed hat and velvet cloak, charging at 
the head of his men to victory or to death, with a 
blind courage which welcomed equally the one or 
the other ; and it is sad to see him degenerate into 
a mere idle gallant, in that most luxurious and 
vicious court, where reigned the gay, gifted, but 
unprincipled son of the slain King. Truly no 
contrast was ever greater in history than that 
between the character and the life of Charles I. 
and Charles II. ! 

As the Cavalier in Doyle's poem sings with wist- 
ful truth :— 



72 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

" For our martyred Charles I lost my lands, 

For his son I spent my all ; 
That a churl might dine, and drink my wine, 

And preach in my father's hall. 
That father died on Marston Moor, 

My son on Worcester plain ; 
But the King he turned his back on me, 

When he came to his own againi-' 

However, it is with the Cavaliers under Charles I. 
that we have to do here. 

Although there was no absolute division in the 
formation of the two armies, the mass of country 
gentlemen sided at first with the King, whose 
forces were thus more skilled than those of his 
opponents in the management of horses and in the 
use of weapons. 

There was little difference at first in appearance 
between the gentlemen who fought on either side, 
but gradually sad-coloured garments and shorn 
heads came to be known as marks of a Puritan, 
while the Cavaliers loved to display their floating 
lovelocks and the brave costumes, which Van- 
dyck has rendered immortal. 

Life among the better classes had grown more 
luxurious throughout the easy rule of the pedantic 
James I., who loved comfort as much as he hated 
strife, and the standard of feasts of the day marks 
certainly a high point in creature comfort, 



THE CAVALIERS 73 

At banquets given by the Duke of Buckingham 
music sounded throughout the courses, and the 
guests were served by attendants in gorgeous 
fancy dresses. 

Curious practical jokes were in favour at great 
feasts — for love of mirth in all forms was character- 
istic of the Cavaliers as opposed to the Puritans — 
as when on one occasion a pie in which a live 
dwarf had been hidden was served up to the royal 
table ; or when prizes were offered at the christen- 
ing feast of James's eldest son for the cleverest dish 
to be brought by a guest, and the chief prize was 
won by Sir George Goring, who had devised the 
somewhat substantial dainty of u four brawny piggs, 
pipeing hott, bitted and harnised with ropes of sar- 
siges, all tyde to a monstrous bag pudding." The 
custom still prevailed of two meals a day, and this 
perhaps was as well when we consider the amount 
consumed usually at each of them. As many as 
forty dishes were sometimes given to each knight 
at a feast ; and Louis XIV., who was a great leader 
of fashion both in France and England, was said 
by the Duchess of Orleans to consume often as his 
share at dinner, "four platefuls of soup, a whole 
pheasant, a partridge, a plateful of salad, mutton 
hashed with garlic, two good-sized slices of ham, a 
dish of pastry, and afterwards fruits and sweet- 



74 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

meats." The fruits were then served piled in 
pyramids, which were sometimes so high that the 
doorways had to be raised to allow of them being 
brought into the room, and many were the drinks 
of which the guests partook along with this 
pyramidal dessert — ale, French wines, white wines, 
and mixed punch, and a rich compound of 
strong drinks and spices, spoken of as sack posset. 
Tea and coffee were not household drinks of 
the time, but in 1652 the first coffee-house had 
been opened in London, and others soon sprang 
into existence — mere shops or small houses where 
men might buy and drink a cup of coffee. In 
1661 Mr. Pepys, in his famous Diary, writes : " I did 
send for a cup of tea (a China drink), of which I 
never had drank before " ; but it seemed to be 
used partly in a medicinal way, if one may judge 
from an entry some years later : " Home, and 
there find my wife making of tea, a drink which 
Mr. Pelling, the potticary, tells her is good for her 
colds and defluxions." Tea was for some years 
after its introduction into London both scarce and 
costly. In 1664, when the East India Company 
wished to present some to the King, they could 
only procure 2 lb. 2 oz., for which they paid at 
the rate of forty shillings per lb. Chocolate was 
known rather earlier than tea, as a choice and 



THE CAVALIERS 75 

pleasant drink. In Strafford's correspondence we 
hear of Sir Toby Matthew, son of the Archbishop 
of York, praising this new beverage so highly to 
Lady Carlisle that she " desired that she might see 
some with an intent to taste it. He brought it, and 
in her chamber made ready a cup full, poured out one 
half and drank it, and liked that so well that he drank 
up the rest — my Lady expecting when she should 
have had a part, had no share but the laughter." 

The bold and often swaggering manners of the 
Cavaliers were the manners of the time, and had 
been largely encouraged by the ever-growing 
practice of annual residence in London. There 
in the "ordinaries," which took the place of 
modern clubs for the gallants of the day, they 
brought smoking to a fine art, took highly per- 
fumed snuff from jewelled boxes, and swore with 
a vehemence and a variety of expressions which 
fortunately have not survived to our day. 

The constant quarrelling and duelling which 
meetings in these ordinaries of hot-headed and 
hard-drinking youths involved, did something to- 
wards keeping them well practised in sword exer- 
cise. Here is an incident, related by Garrard, which 
shows the manners of the times : " Lord Lumley 
had a strange mischance befal him, the Lord 
Savage being with him in a coach. In a strait 



76 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

(narrow) lane his coachman unadvisedly pressed 
upon some gentlemen afoot, so that he gave them 
much offence ; young Mohun struck at the coach- 
man with his cane, the coachman lashed at him 
with his whip. He instantly drew his sword, ran 
the coachman often through, hurt the Lord Lumley 
through the arm; which made a great combustion 
in the place." 

It was natural that men whose blows were so 
ready should fight well, especially against an enemy 
whom they regarded as their social inferior. 

On the other hand, private life in a Cavalier house- 
hold, before the Civil War began, seemed to have 
been pleasant, orderly, and cheerful. Lady New- 
castle, sister of the gallant Cavalier, Sir Charles 
Lucas, describes the early years of herself and her 
sisters, bred up in a loyal country-house, " in plenty 
— or rather with superfluity. Likewise," she says, 
" we were bred virtuously, modestly, civilly, 
honourably, and on honest principles. As for 
plenty, we had not only for necessity, conveniency, 
and decency, but for delight and pleasure to super- 
fluity. ... As for our garments, my mother did 
not only delight to see us neat and cleanly, fine 
and gay, but rich and costly ; maintaining us to 
the height of her estate, but not beyond it. For 
we were so far from being in debt before these 



THE CAVALIERS 77 

wars, as we were rather beforehand with the world : 
buying all with ready money, not on the score." 
And as to the training of her three brothers, she 
says, they were bred so "that they loved virtue, 
endeavoured merit, practised justice, and spoke 
truth ; they were constantly loyal and truly valiant. 
. . . Their practice was when they met together, to 
exercise themselves with fencing, wrestling, shoot- 
ing, and such like exercises ; for I observed they 
did seldom hawk or hunt, and very seldom or 
never dance or play on music, saying it was too 
effeminate for masculine spirits. ... As for the 
pastimes of my sisters when they were in the 
country, it was to read, work, walk, and discourse 
with each other." And of the family life in town 
she writes: "Their custom was in winter-time to 
go sometimes to plays, or to ride in their coaches 
about the streets to see the concourse and recourse 
of people. And in the spring-time to visit the 
spring garden, Hyde Park, and the like places. 
And sometimes they would have music, and sup 
in barges upon the water." 

Those who would go more minutely into the 
regulations for family life at the time of Charles I., 
can study the rules drawn up, or rather revised, 
from his father's — by Sir John Harrington, the son 
of Elizabeth's godson, and last favourite. 



78 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

" That no servant bee absent from praier, at 
morning or evening, without a lawfull excuse, to 
be alledged within one day after, upon paine to 
forfeit for every tyme, 2d. 

" 2. Item, That none swear any othe, uppon paine 
for every othe, id. 

tl 3. Item, That no man leave any doore open that 
he findeth shut, without there be cause, upon paine 
for every tyme, id." 

It is interesting to note that an oath among house- 
hold servants was valued at the same rate as omit- 
ting to shut a door. 

Item 10 shows the value set upon glass for the 
table :— 

" If any man breake a glasse, hee shall annswer 
the price thereof out of his wages ; and, if it bee not 
known who breake it, the buttler shall pay for it, on 
paine of I2d." 

Item 17 imposes a fine of id. on any serving man 
who wears, "a foule shirt on Sunday, nor broken 
hose or shoes, or dublett without buttons." The 
keeping clean of houses was not so severe a task 
then as it is to the servants of our own day ; the 
standard of cleanliness was lower, and also the 
rooms were, as a rule, more scantily furnished, and 
less elaborately ornamented. 

Only in bedrooms were the curtains, hangings, 



THE CAVALIERS 79 

pillows, and cushions both at the head and foot of 
the bed, and embroidered couches and footstools 
far more heavy and stifling than we should think 
wholesome. 

Tapestry had reached a high pitch of beauty 
before the war, but the rule of Cromwell checked 
its growth, as it did that of all other purely 
artistic work. 

During Charles I.'s reign the Thames ceased to 
be the great high-road of London, and hackney 
carriages began to stand in the streets for hire. 

" So that," writes Garrard, " sometimes there is 
twenty of them together, which disperse up and 
down^that they and others are to be had every- 
where as watermen are to be had by the waterside." 

In the matter of dress few will deny that for 
simple beauty and refinement of taste, no fashions 
have equalled those followed by Charles I. and his 
wife. Vandyck's portraits have given them to us 
for all time, and to almost any face and any figure, 
grace and comeliness is imparted by the close- 
fitting suit of dark velvet, tight at the knee, and 
showing silk stockings and buckled shoes, the falling 
lace collar, short cloak, and broad felt hat with 
drooping feather, even if we could see it without 
the floating curls which were an essential part of a 
Cavalier. 



80 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

In the matter of hairdressing Henrietta Maria 
did a service to English ladies, for she replaced the 
fashion of Elizabeth's later days, that of dyed and 
frizzled wigs of huge size, by a natural and most 
becoming coiffure, consisting of loose ringlets, and 
a twisted knot of hair at the back, and on the fore- 
head a few soft tiny curls, with a cluster of thicker 
curls on each side of the face. 

Such were a few of the details of English life, at 
the time when Englishmen were called upon to 
undertake the most painful of all duties, that of 
ranging themselves in battle array either on one 
side or the other, in a Civil War ; the Cavaliers 
gathered round Charles' banner, and, as says Sir 
Richard Varney, " Wee stood upon our liberties for 
the Kings sake, least he might be the King of meane 
subjects, or we the subjects of a meane King." 

And from among them man after man rises 
before our view, each well fitted to form a hero 
of romance, so that it is difficult to know whose 
fortunes to follow, or on whom to fix our eyes as 
representative Cavaliers. 

Perhaps we cannot do better here, where we are 
looking at the military side of the King's followers, 
than to picture for a few moments the three 
Cavalier generals who perhaps differed most from 
one another in their characters and in their motives 



THE CAVALIERS 81 

in fighting for the King — Prince Rupert of the 
Palatinate, George, Lord Goring, Earl of Norwich, 
and James Graham, 4th Earl, and 1st Marquis of 
Montrose. 

Rupert was a survival of the knight-errant of 
earlier days : he was joined by relationship and 
affection to the King, but had little personally to 
lose or gain by the issues of the war. Bold and 
reckless, gallant and gay, he seemed to dash through 
the war at the head of his victorious band of horse- 
men with the rapidity and brilliance of a meteor, 
and when his own tactics were used against him, 
and his headlong charges were no longer victorious, 
he seemed to vanish from the historical scene as 
suddenly and as completely as the meteor when 
its course is run. 

Goring, from the opening of the war, was self- 
seeking in his service. His military abilities were 
perhaps higher than those of any other man in the 
royal camp, but he employed them largely for his 
own personal advancement. Like Rupert, he could 
ill brook control, but unlike the Prince he lacked 
generosity, and personal attachment either to the 
Royal cause or to its leader. 

Montrose was the noblest character of the three ; 
brave and self-forgetting from first to last, he only 
joined the King when he could do so with true — 



82 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

if mistaken — admiration of his government. He 
gave to the Royal cause ungrudging service and 
high-souled enthusiasm, which might have had 
more permanent results had his army been any- 
thing more than a collection of feud-bearing, undis- 
ciplined clansmen. 

In age there were not twelve years between the 
three generals ; Goring was born in 1608, Montrose 
in 161 2, and Rupert in 1619. The christening feast 
of Prince Rupert took place in Prague amid en- 
thusiastic rejoicings, for he was the first son born 
to his parents, Frederick, Prince Palatine of the 
Rhine, and his wife Elizabeth, the beautiful and 
high-spirited sister of Charles I., after their accept- 
ance of the crown of Bohemia. Frederick was a 
devoted follower of the hero King of Sweden, 
Gustavus Adolphus, whose military methods were 
studied in England alike by Cavaliers and Puritans ; 
but the new King of Bohemia had little of the vigour 
of his great model which was needed to sustain 
him in the position of a Protestant champion of 
Europe. His reign in Bohemia was short. On the 
19th of November, 1620, was fought the battle of 
Prague, or the battle of the White Mountain, in 
which the Austrian Emperor Maximilian was vic- 
torious ; and the unfortunate Palatine family had 
to flee in the night for their lives. So great was the 
haste that the baby Prince Rupert was nearly left 




Walker &■ Cockerell. 



Prince Rupert. 

From the painting by Sir Peter Lely in the National Portrait Gallery. 



THE CAVALIERS 83 

behind, and was only flung hastily into the last 

departing carriage by his father's chamberlain, 

who found him sleeping on the ground. The 

gallant little Protestant kingdom of Holland gave 

the unfortunate family shelter, and maintained 

them generously ; and there Rupert grew up as 

the chosen companion of his mother, learning from 

her such manly pursuits as hawking and hunting, 

and drinking in, no doubt, from her stirring tales 

of the past, the spirit of warlike chivalry which 

was his chief characteristic. 

After the death of his father Rupert went to 
England, and there he was kindly treated by his 
uncle, the King, though the bond of affection which 
existed between them could not have been based 
on any similarity of disposition. 

The way in which these three Cavaliers took their 
places in the Royal army was characteristic of their 
different natures. 

Rupert threw himself, from the beginning, heart 
and soul into the King's cause. Goring only 
attached himself to the Royal party when he had 
failed to secure as prominent a position as he 
desired in that of the Parliament ; while Montrose 
drew his sword at first for the sake of the Covenant 
and only became Charles' ardent champion in 
Scotland when he believed him to have become 
a constitutional ruler. 



84 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

Goring in his early days was a wild and spend- 
thrift young gallant, requiring constant pecuniary 
help from his father, and even receiving such help 
also from his father-in-law, the Earl of Cork, 
though Irish noblemen are not usually looked 
upon as sources of wealth to their connexions. 

Goring was not of a robust constitution, and 
he received a shot in the leg, near the ankle-bone, 
at the siege of Breda, in 1637, which was a constant 
source of trouble to him. 

He held the Governorship of Portsmouth for 
many years, and seemed to waver between the two 
parties ; but in August, 1642, he declared openly 
for the King, and a month later was obliged to 
surrender his poorly-fed and scantily-clad garrison 
to the Parliamentary forces. 

He wished, from the first, to hold a prominent 
post in whichever army he served. Clarendon 
writes of him that "his ambition was unlimited," 
and that he " wanted nothing but industry (for he 
had wit and courage and understanding and am- 
bition, uncontrolled by any fear of God or man) 
to have been as eminent and successful in the 
highest attempt in wickedness of any man in the 
age he lived in, and of all his qualifications dis- 
simulation was his masterpiece." 

He had, perhaps, the highest ability as a general 



THE CAVALIERS 85 

of any man in the service of the King ; but he was 
strikingly devoid of the loftier qualities of a soldier, 
which Rupert possessed to a certain extent, and of 
which Montrose was a noble example. 

After the surrender of Portsmouth, Goring went 
over to the Netherlands, and returned with recruits, 
gathered partly by the exertions of the Queen. 
He landed in the North, and routed Sir Thomas 
Fairfax near Leeds, only to be taken prisoner 
shortly afterwards by the same General at Wake- 
field, where he rose from his bed of fever to face 
the enemy. 

The next nine months he spent in the Tower, 
but was exchanged with the Earl of Lowthian in 
time to fight beside Rupert at the battle of Preston; 
and on July 2nd, 1644, he commanded the left wing 
of the Royal horse at Marston Moor. 

Rupert seemed to bear a charmed life : no bullet 
had power to hurt him, no foe could take him 
prisoner. He was generally with the King, and 
shared with him the gloomy pageant of raising 
the Royal standard at Nottingham, when the rain 
and wind first drenched England's flag, and then 
blew it down, and the want of enthusiasm in the 
general assembly seemed prophetic of the evil days 
to come. The Prince was made commander of the 
horse, and to such a nature as his, restless, bold, 



86 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

and enterprising, the task of mounting his troop 
must have been thoroughly congenial. His was 
the typical Cavalier figure, in scarlet coat, floating 
sash, plumed hat, and heavy riding-boots, he was 
soon familiar to all the country-side. From hall 
to hamlet he rode in search of chargers for his 
men, always gay, good-humoured, and gallant, no 
doubt wheedling many a stout horse from a re- 
luctant countryman or his wife; wherever he found 
a Puritan horse, putting, as it was said, a Cavalier 
upon it, and doing all with his infectiously gay 
cry, " For a King, for a King ! " 

As a soldier his ability was great, and his valour 
greater ; the charge of himself and his horsemen 
came to be more dreaded than anything else in the 
Royal army. He knew no fear, and no hesitation, 
and he had the power of instilling his own gallant 
spirit into his men. But his weak point as a 
general was the way in which he allowed his men 
to pursue their foes far from the field of battle, 
and so often left unsupported the main body of 
the Royal army. 

Rupert was always in favour of a battle, and was 
present at most of the Royalist engagements ; after 
Marston Moor he was made Commander-in-chief, 
taking orders from none save the King, and this 
increased the jealousy of Goring, who had been 



THE CAVALIERS 87 

made Lieutenant-General of the King's horse a 
month after the same battle. 

Goring was a more self-indulgent leader than 
Rupert, though in both the habits of drinking and 
swearing were those common to the age. Goring 
was said to permit more license in plunder and 
devastation among his men than any other Cavalier 
leader. After Marston Moor he went down into 
the West, until ordered back to Oxford to cover 
Rupert's junction with the King. His superior 
strategic ability made him an unwelcome colleague 
to the Prince, and he was soon sent back to the 
West, where he was defeated by Fairfax at Lang- 
port, and retiring into North Devon, spent his time 
in alternate disputes with his officers, and with the 
Council of the Prince of Wales, besides keeping 
an over "jolly" camp of his own. 

Instead of obeying the King's orders to join him 
at Oxford, he crossed over to France under pretext 
of recruiting for the Royal army, and there he 
disappears from among the Cavaliers. 

He never came back, but commanded English 
regiments in the Netherlands, and finally went to 
Spain, and died in Madrid in great poverty in 

1657- 

He was as able an officer as ever served King 

Charles, but his keen eye for the chances of a 



88 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

battle was not joined to the patience and delibera- 
tion needed in a long campaign. 

Rupert's exploits are the history of the Civil War 
itself. He was the centre of the brilliant charge at 
Chalgrove, ten miles from Oxford, where Hampden 
got his death-blow in 1643 ; he took Bristol, only 
to have to surrender it on a later day ; he was 
with the King at Newbury on the 20th of September, 
1643, where, after a brilliant charge, his cavalry 
were worsted by the stolid courage of the London 
train-bands ; at Marston Moor not all his gallantry 
could save the North from falling into the power 
of the Parliament, or his troopers, who had now 
met their match, from being scattered by Cromwell 
and his Ironsides "like a little dust." At Naseby, 
on the 14th of June, 1644, he fought again beside 
his uncle, but by his precipitancy interfered with 
the King's plan of action. Though he conquered 
Ireton's men in the early part of the fight, the 
battle went against the Royalists, for the Parlia- 
mentary army had become by this time such a 
trained and powerful force that it was difficult to 
beat. 

In September, 1646, Rupert was forced to sur- 
render Bristol into the hands of Fairfax ; and 
thereupon the King took from him his command, 
and his generalship as a Cavalier ceased. 

The end seems a little hard ; he had done his 



THE CAVALIERS 89 

best, as he wrote to a friend just before the siege 
began : — 

"You do well to wonder why Prince Rupert 
is not with the King, but when you know the Lord 
Digby's intentions to ruin him, you will then not 
find it strange. But all this shall not hinder me 
from doing my duty where I am, and that which 
shall become your friend. Rupert. 

" Bristol, July 29, 1645." 

He published a Declaration, justifying his sur- 
render as inevitable, saying that he had " esteemed 
it his happiness to have served the King in difficult 
times," and that as he had "faithfully served the 
King, he had not served him unadvisedly, but like 
a soldier as well as a man of honour." 

On the 5th July, 1646, Prince Rupert left Dover 
for Calais, and returned no more to England until 
his cousin Charles II. sat upon the throne. 

He commanded the English ships in many a 
sea-fight against the Dutch in his later days, and 
it seems a strange end for such an eventful life as 
his, that he died amid peaceful surroundings, and 
occupied in scientific experiments, as the Governor 
of Windsor Castle. 

Montrose's campaign against the Parliamentary 
party was not a long one. 



90 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

After the interview with the King, to which he 
went an Earl and from which he returned a 
Marquis, his devotion to the Royal cause never 
wavered. 

He was a man of noble birth and nobler nature, 
lofty, high-souled, and self-denying; a poet, and 
a lover of all that was best in the Cavalier training. 
He had become Earl of Montrose on the death 
of his father, when he was but fourteen, and in 
the course of the next year he had gone as a 
student to the University of St. Andrews ; there 
he had become proficient not only in his studies, 
but in hunting, hawking, archery, and golf. 

He had married, when only seventeen, Magdalene, 
the daughter of Lord Carnegie, and the youthful 
pair had lived with the bride's father for the first 
three years of their wedded life. 

In February, 1644, shortly after his interview 
with Charles, Montrose was appointed Lieutenant- 
General to the King in Scotland, and within little 
more than a year he was victorious in six battles. 
The main body of his army was composed of 
veteran soldiers from Antrim. About 1500 had 
been sent over by the Marquis of Antrim, who 
was a Macdonald, the sworn foe of the Campbell 
clan, by whom the Macdoiialds had been driven 
from their native land. 



THE CAVALIERS 91 

Montrose was a general of no mean order ; it 
was he who first taught the wild clansmen their 
own strength in battle, and with only about 3000 
foot soldiers, and no cavalry at all, he defeated an 
army of militia in the service of the Covenanters, 
and then marched on Perth, which surrendered to 
him at once. 

He next took Aberdeen, where he was unable to 
restrain his soldiers from a cruel slaughter of the 
helpless townspeople, and this was always remem- 
bered against him by his enemies. The head of the 
Campbell clan was the Duke of Argyle, a mean 
coward, quite unworthy of his brave followers, or 
of his noble birth. On the 2nd of February, 1645, 
Montrose gained another victory over the Camp- 
bells, at Inverlochy, beneath Ben Nevis, and while 
the clansmen fought gallantly on either side, Argyle 
himself sat in a boat and "watched what the end 
would be," as did one with a yet higher title than 
his, watch the issue of another fight from the hills 
above the river Boyne ! 

But though Montrose could " conquer in the 
battle," yet by the nature of his army, he could not 
" win in the war." 

His intention was to march south, and to go to 
the assistance of the King, but his followers had no 
such ideas of continuity in their warfare. 



92 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

The Macdonalds 1 wish was to fight their foes the 
Campbells, who were in the north, and the chief 
desire of the other clans was to plunder freely and 
use such license as was permitted in the Highlands, 
but was punished further south. Therefore, after 
the victory at Kilsyth, on the 15th of August, 1645, 
Montrose found his army beginning to desert him ; 
many of the Highlanders went back to their native 
glens, and of the gallant Irish Macdonalds only 500 
remained. 

He summoned a Parliament at Glasgow, but 
before it could assemble, he was overwhelmed by a 
large force recruited from the Scotch army in 
England, under David Leslie, which met him at 
Philiphaugh, beside Ettrick water. 

The odds were too heavy against him ; the Scotch 
scattered in all directions, the brave Irish fought 
till only fifty of them remained alive, all the women 
and children who had followed the army were slain 
in cold blood, and Montrose, defeated and almost 
alone, fled to the Highlands, and soon after took 
ship across to Norway. 

The last act in the tragic drama of his life took 
place five years later, when he returned to make 
one more effort for the Royalist cause in Scotland. 

The year before, he had fainted at the news of 
the King's death, little thinking how soon he was to 
follow him. 



THE CAVALIERS 93 

He landed in Orkney with a little band of 
followers, hoping that the clansmen would rally 
round him ; but he had no success, and after 
wandering destitute among the hills, he was sold to 
his enemies by M'Leod of Assynt, a connection of 
the Campbells. 

He was attainted as a traitor, and was condemned 
to be hanged at the market-cross in Edinburgh, 
with his book and his declaration round his neck. 
One of the bards of his own land has well told the 
tale of that gallant death, and no words could 
better give Montrose's high-souled view of the 
ghastly punishment he was to suffer than those put 
into his mouth by Aytoun. 

" Now, by my faith as belted knight, 
And by the name I bear, 
And by the bright Saint Andrew's Cross, 
That waves above us there 

I have not sought in battlefield 

A wreath of such renown, 
Nor dared I hope on my dying day 

To win the martyr's crown ! 

There is a chamber far away 

Where sleep the good and brave, 
But a better place ye have named for me 

Than by my father's grave. 
For truth and right, 'gainst treason's might, 

This hand hath always striven, 
And ye raise it up for a witness still 

In the eye of earth and heaven. 



94 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

Then nail my head on yonder tower — 

Give every town a limb — 
And God who made shall gather them : 

I go from you to Him !" 

Lofty words, which might form the farewell to 
earth of many a gallant Cavalier spirit ! 

He was subjected to every possible hardship and 
indignity by his captors, and was borne through 
Edinburgh in a cart, with his hands tied behind 
him, in the vain hope that the common folk would 
stone him. 

He was refused the ministrations of his own 
clergy at the end, and declined those of the " grim 
Geneva doctors," knowing too well what would be 
the style of their commendatory prayer : " Lord, 
vouchsafe yet to touch the obdurate heart of this 
proud, incorrigible sinner, this wicked, perjured, 
traitorous and profane person, who refuses to 
hearken to the voice of Thy Kirk." " It was a 
day of wrath," says Mr. Morley, "and the gospel 
of charity was for the moment sealed." So, 

"Alone he bent the knee ; 
And veiled his face for Christ's dear grace 
Beneath the gallows-tree." 

Then, in his brave array of scarlet cassock, silk 
stockings, and ribboned shoes — a Cavalier to the 



THE CAVALIERS 95 

end, even in outward show — with light step and 
serene face, 

" He climbed the lofty ladder 

As it were the path to heaven," 

and to the sound of a long and angry thunder- 
blast there went back to God the soul of one of 
the noblest of the Cavaliers who ever served King 
Charles. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE PURITANS : HAMPDEN AND HUTCHINSON 

The word Cavalier carries its own meaning, but 
that of Puritan has been made to cover a wide 
significance. 

There is the moderate Puritan, in the religious 
sense of the word, he who sought with honest if 
harsh energy to bring back to primitive faith and 
purity the Christian Church in England ; there is 
the stricter Puritan who would go still further 
in what he considered religious reform, and would 
sweep away all outward forms and historic cere- 
monies, and let each man be guided by his 
individual conscience alone : and besides these 
two classes, the name Puritan has also been 
applied to the vast mass of men who fought 
under the banners of Essex and of Cromwell, 
against the Royal party and King Charles. 

The translation of the Bible into English by 
Tyndale, and its consequent study throughout the 
kingdom, was the chief cause of the new religious 

spirit which gradually demanded a remedy for the 

9 6 



THE PURITANS 97 

abuses which had grown up in the Church ; the 
ideal of Puritanism was a grand one, but one 
not easy to realise, especially in England. Social 
equality was preached, and to a certain extent 
practised, by the leaders ; and it was during the 
time when Cromwell's " plain russet-coated gentle- 
men" saved the side for which they fought that 
many of the old class prejudices began to be 
swept away. " The meanest peasant " among the 
Puritans, says J. R. Green, " felt himself en- 
nobled as a child of God. The proudest noble 
recognised a spiritual equality in the poorest 
saint." Men learned to think and to act more 
on their own responsibility, and though in their 
actions much that was good was broken and 
destroyed, so also vanished much that was evil 
and corrupt. 

It is not in the extreme figures of a movement 
that its course should be traced, or by their actions 
that it should be judged ; but in the moderate 
men who grasp the new principle, and try to rule 
their lives and those of others by it with wisdom 
and with moderation. 

Essex and Fairfax, the two early leaders of the 
Parliamentary army, were neither men of extreme 
Puritan views. Essex was appointed general 
chiefly on account of his rank, but he was too 



98 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

slow and irresolute to cope with the difficulties 
of the position ; Fairfax wanted firmness as a 
statesman to improve his military successes, and 
his tastes were intellectual rather than religious. 
A tall dark man he was, of great courage, but of 
"meek and humble carriage," and all students 
have reason to bless his care for learning, in that 
after the taking of Oxford his first act was to 
put a strong guard of soldiers round the Bodleian 
Library. 

Cromwell himself was the great Puritan, in whom 
the strength of the movement is best seen, and 
another prominent figure is that of Henry Ireton, 
his son-in-law. It was said that "no man could 
prevail so much, nor order Cromwell so far as 
Ireton could." They worked and fought side by 
side for years, Ireton having just the qualities 
most esteemed by his leader — those of godliness, 
self-sacrifice, and energy. 

Clarendon describes him as a man "of a melan- 
cholic, reserved, dark nature, who communicated 
his thoughts to very few " ; and another contem- . 
porary says : " We that knew him can and must 
say truly, we know no man like-minded, . . . few 
so singly mind the things of Jesus Christ, of public 
concernment, of the interest of the precious sons 
of Sion." 



THE PURITANS 99 

The scriptural phraseology of the Puritans was 
a source of comment and often merriment to their 
opponents, although in many cases the expres- 
sions were used in all earnestness, and came from 
exclusive study of the Bible. 

Phrases were common such as the "godly," the 
"Lord's People," the "ransomed," as applied to 
their own side; and the "profane," in speaking 
of the Royalists, or "corrupt unjust persons," 
"scandalous to the profession of the Gospel," 
as Cromwell addressed the opposing members of 
Parliament before dissolving them by force. 

As the war ran its course outward differences, 
such as those of speech and dress, came to be 
more accentuated between the two parties. The 
Puritans usually wore tall steeple-crowned hats, 
short tight knee-breeches, and plain linen collars, 
and they gradually left off the flowing locks 
customary at the time, and brought their appear- 
ance to suit the name of Roundhead by cutting 
their hair close. 

Amusements, as an end in themselves, were dis- 
couraged and often forbidden under Puritan rule ; 
and so the dourer side of the English nature was 
brought into a prominence that from some circles 
at least has never quite departed. The stage, 
dancing, music, and art, were alike by the more 

LOFC. 



ioo WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

severe Puritans considered at the best unprofit- 
able, and at the worst sinful, though Cromwell 
himself was fond both of music and of pictures. 
What the Puritans as a whole gained for them- 
selves was a higher, more consistent ideal of 
individual life and conduct ; what they lost was 
the daily and hourly spirit of enjoyment in the 
whole of the natural and artistic world, the joy 
of life in the works of Him " Who hath made all 
things well." 

In the ranks of the Parliamentary army was not 
found the passionate, personal loyalty that inspired 
such men as Strafford and Montrose, and which 
has proved so ennobling a characteristic to men 
of all ages, but rather a subdued, sober belief in 
their own powers, and in their election by God 
to do His chosen task. 

" Our soldiers," writes Baillie of the Covenanting 
army, " were all lusty and full of courage, the most 
of them stout young ploughmen . . . great cheer- 
fulness in the face of all. The sight of the nobles 
and their pastors daily raised their hearts ; the 
good sermons and prayers daily under the roof of 
heaven, to which their drums did call them for 
bells (true there was cursing and brawling in some 
quarters, whereat we were grieved) ; the remon- 
strance very frequent of the goodness of their 



THE PURITANS 101 

cause, of their conduct hitherto by a hand clearly 
divine." 

So, led by noble and brave men on either 
side, men of whom John Hampden, Colonel Hut- 
chinson, Montrose, and Falkland are all dif- 
ferent types, the two parties ranged themselves for 
the battle that had become inevitable ! 

Among the great men who fought for the con- 
stitutional rights of England in the ranks of the 
Parliamentary army, no figure stands out more 
clearly than that of John Hampden, although he 
got his death-blow on the battlefield of Chalgrove, 
in 1643, when the Civil War was only beginning 
to wax hot. Hampden was a cousin of Cromwell's, 
and came of a fine old family in Buckinghamshire, 
whose name dates back to Saxon times, and whose 
home, among the Chiltern Hills, still bears the 
name of Hampden, near to the white cross cut 
on the hillside, above the village of Monks 
Risborough. 

Hampden's father died while he was a child ; 
and his education was carried on in the neigh- 
bourhood, as was then the usual custom, even with 
sons of rich and well-born parents. He went first 
to the local grammar school at Thame, and later 
became a commoner at Magdalen College, Oxford. 
When Charles I.'s sister Elizabeth married the 



102 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

Elector Palatine, Hampden and Laud were among 
the Oxford men chosen to write a congratulatory 
address to her ; one of the few occasions probably 
upon which their views would have been identical. 

Like many of those who fought in the Parlia- 
mentary army, Hampden was by nature a man 
of peaceful and studious habits ; wise, thoughtful, 
observant of men and things, of courteous manners 
and persuasive speech, of honest and upright repu- 
tation, and of "good sense and naturally good 
taste." 

His portraits all show power and vigour in the 
high massive brow, the firm chin, and the clear 
far-seeing eyes that seem to look beyond the field 
of Chalgrove, even to the scaffold before Whitehall. 
From the beginning of Charles' reign Hampden 
was associated with the opposition ; but it was in 
1635 that he first stood forth in a prominent posi- 
tion as the opposer of the tax called ship-money, 
which the King wished to levy without legal right. 

Hampden sat as member for Buckinghamshire, 
and both in the Short and the Long Parliaments 
he acted as second to Pym ; and with him, in 
the Long Parliament, he supported Sir Edward 
Dering's Bill for the abolition of bishops in 1641. 

With Pym, too, he shared the midnight triumph 
over the Royalist party, when by a majority of 




Walker &■ Cockerel!. 



John Hampden. 

From a bust in the National Portrait Gallery. 



THE PURITANS 103 

eleven they carried the document of the Grand 
Remonstrance, after a long and angry debate, 
which demanded that " his Majesty shall employ in 
places of trust such as Parliament may have cause 
to confide in," and furthermore, that "a general 
synod of the most grave, most learned, and 
judicious divines be assembled to settle the future 
state of religion." 

On January 3rd, in the following year, Hampden 
was among the five members impeached by the 
King, in one of his most fatal acts of folly. There 
are few more pitiable pictures in history than that 
of the dignified figure of Charles, his handsome 
Stuart face full of irresolution and dismay, as he 
stands in the House he has unlawfully entered, and 
scans the long rows of benches for the "birds" 
who are ° flown." 

They went before his coming, in discontent and 
secrecy, but they returned some days later by the 
open highway of the river, with something akin to 
triumph, their cause strengthened by the vacillating 
conduct of the King himself. 

Some years before this Hampden had resisted 
the King's demand for a loan, and had preferred 
imprisonment to complying with an illegal demand, 
declaring that "he could be content to lend, as 
well as others, but feared to draw upon himself 



io 4 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

that curse in Magna Charta which should be read 
twice a year against those who infringe it." 

His imprisonment, however, was short ; unlike 
that of his friend, Sir John Eliot, who languished 
in the Tower, under Royal displeasure, until death 
set him free, and whose chief solace during the 
last years of his life seemed to be the affectionate 
correspondence between himself and Hampden. 
The fatherly interest which Hampden shows in 
Eliot's two sons is a kindly trait in his severe 
nature ; in fact, he assumes an almost paternal 
authority over them, when in writing he says : 
"Make good use of the booke you shall receave 
fro: mee, and of yo r time. Be sure you shall 
render a strict account of both to yo r ever assured 
friend and servant, Jo. Hampden." 

In 1632 Eliot died in the Tower, and two years 
later Hampden lost his first wife, to whom he was 
tenderly attached, and whom he describes in her 
epitaph as " in her pilgrimage, the staie and com- 
fort of her neighbours, the love and glory of a 
well-ordered family, the delight and happiness of 
tender parents — but a crown of blessings to a 
husband." 

After her death he did not live much in his 
beautiful Buckinghamshire home. His life there, 
of study and meditation, among the Chiltern Hills, 



THE PURITANS 105 

was but a preparation such as Cromwell's among 
the fens of Ely, for the time when he should lead 
out the militia on those same hills to take part in 
the Civil War. 

He watched the constant encroachments of the 
King upon the liberty of the people, and in the 
spring of 1636 he took his stand against the Royal 
power by heading the refusal to pay the ship- 
money demanded of the county of Buckingham- 
shire. From that county was required by the 
writ issued, a ship of 450 tons, and 150 men, with 
fittings and ammunition complete, also wages and 
provisions for twenty-six weeks ; or, instead of 
such a ship, the sum of £4500 to be paid by the 
inhabitants of the county to the Naval treasurer 
for the King's use. 

Large questions are often involved in small 
sums, and the amount for which Hampden became 
the champion of the people's rights, and which 
stands as owing against his name in the writ of 
Buckinghamshire defaulters, is £i, us. 6d. 

After this act his life was changed : he was no 
more the country gentleman, of studious habits, 
but fond, too, of outdoor sports, working among 
his neighbours as a busy magistrate, happy and 
active in the small arena of country life, but he 
became one with the great moving spirit of the 



106 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

time. From the house to which he migrated in 
London, near to that of Pym, he watched the 
ever-growing struggle between absolute and con- 
stitutional government, and he threw the whole 
force of his vigorous nature into the constitutional 
side of the struggle, hoping to bring the King 
himself to see the justice of his people's cause. 
Hampden sought to persuade men's minds ; 
Strafford, the real leader of the Royal party, 
wished to coerce them into submission. " Mr. 
Hampden," he writes, in a letter to Archbishop 
Laud, " is a great Brother " (Puritan) ; " and the 
very genius of that nation of people leads them 
always to oppose, both civilly and ecclesiastically, 
all that ever authority ordains for them. But, in 
good faith, were they rightly served, they should 
be whipped home into their right wits ; and much 
beholden they should be to any that would 
thoroughly take pains with them in that sort." 

Led by two such men as Pym on the one side 
and Strafford on the other, no wonder the gulf 
was ever widening, until the " parting of the ways " 
was reached, and the royal standard waved at 
Nottingham, with only half England's soldiers 
beneath it. 

In Parliament Hampden did his best to con- 
vince men's reason ; he was an industrious worker, 



THE PURITANS 107 

and a careful and able speaker ; not eloquent or 
rhetorical, but moderate, accurate, and concilia- 
tory. 

Although he and Cromwell did not work largely 
together, he recognised the latent power in his 
cousin's nature. " Pray, Mr. Hampden," inquired 
Lord Digby of him on one occasion, " who is that 
man ? for I see he is on our side by his speaking 
so warmly to-day ; " and Hampden answered, 
"That sloven whom you see before you hath no 
ornament in his speech ; but that sloven, I say, 
if we should ever come to a breach with the King 
(which God forbid !), in such a case, I say, that 
sloven will be the greatest man in England ! " 
Cromwell himself, in one of his speeches, recalls 
a discussion he had with Hampden, on the for- 
mation of a better army, when Hampden seemed 
to think his ideal an impossible one. " He was," 
says Cromwell, "a wise and worthy person ; and 
he did think I talked a good notion, but an im- 
practicable one." Hampden did not live long 
enough to see the "good notion" realised in the 
model army, and the Ironsides who swept before 
them even Rupert's cavalry, or to behold the ful- 
filment of his own suggestion, and the "sloven" 
reigning in Charles's room. 

The opening of the Civil War was a time of 



108 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

private sorrow to Hampden. As was the case in 
so many families his house was divided, and his 
kinsmen fought in opposite camps, and, moreover, 
he lost both his eldest son and a favourite married 
daughter during the first year of the campaign. 

He had honestly done his best in Parliament 
to prevent the necessity of war ; but when it was 
inevitable he showed himself foremost in battle as 
he had been in debate. 

On the Buckinghamshire Hills he called out the 
militia, and first in his own county and then in 
Northamptonshire he was active in urging on the 
Parliamentary forces ; fighting continually, with 
promptness, obedience, and courage, which merited 
a better general than Essex. 

In June, 1643, the King's headquarters were at 
Oxford, and Essex with his army lay not far off, 
at Thame, in Buckinghamshire. 

Hampden had urged that the roads should be 
better watched between the two towns, knowing 
as he did that the country was one in which 
offensive warfare was easier than defensive. 

Some of Essex's men had disturbed the Royalist 
outposts at Islip, and this was the signal for an 
advance by Rupert into the country held by his 
opponents. Hampden undertook at once the 
daring task of warning Essex to guard the only 



THE PURITANS 109 

bridge, that at Chiselhampton, by which the river 
could be crossed. 

On Chalgrove Field, ten miles east of Oxford, 
Hampden met the Prince, before Essex and the 
main body of the army had time to come up. 

At the head of the Parliamentary cavalry Hamp- 
den charged Rupert and his horse, and in the first 
charge he got his death-blow. His arm was struck 
by two balls, which shattered the bone and entered 
his body. 

Those who saw him riding quietly from the 
field or ever the fight was done, knew that some- 
thing unusual had happened, for " it was a thing," 
says Lord Clarendon, " he never used to do." 

Faint and suffering, he yet managed to sit his 
horse, even while leaping a brook, until he reached 
Thame, and there he was received into the house 
of one Ezekiel Browne, and tended with such skill 
as was possessed by the doctors of the time. 

For a week he lingered, in great bodily pain 
and in heaviness of heart for the fate of the 
cause for which he had given his life. 

In spite of his suffering, he used the little 
strength he retained to send despatches to Par- 
liament urging them to a wiser conduct of the 
war than they had as yet shown. 

A few hours before his death he received the 



no WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

Holy Communion, saying that though he "could 
not away with the governance of the Church by 
bishops, and did utterly abominate the scandalous 
lives of some clergymen," yet he " thought its doc- 
trine in the greater part primitive and conformable 
to God's word, as in Holy Scripture revealed." 

The words of prayer which he uttered with 
laboured breath, as the end drew near, might have 
been an anticipation of those which fifteen years 
later fell from the dying lips of his cousin Crom- 
well. " Save me, O Lord, if it be Thy good will, 
from the jaws of death. Pardon my manifold 
transgressions. O Lord, save my bleeding country. 
Have these realms in Thy especial keeping." Then, 
at the last, " Lord Jesu, receive my soul ! O Lord, 

save my country — O Lord, be merciful to " and 

with a cry for mercy, either for himself or others 
on his lips, the brave, wise spirit of Hampden was 
set free from his shattered body. 

His death, says Clarendon, caused as great a 
consternation in the Puritan party " as if their 
whole army had been defeated " ; and the copy of 
the Kingdome's Weekly Intelligencer, the newspaper 
of the day, which came out in the week following 
his death, bears record that "the loss of Colonel 
Hampden goeth near the heart of every man that 
loves the good of his king and country, and makes 



THE PURITANS in 

some little content to be at the army now that he is 
gone. . . . The memory of this deceased colonel is 
such that in no age to come but it will more and 
more be had in honour and esteem ; a man so 
religious, and of that prudence, judgment, temper, 
valour, and integrity, that he hath left few his like 
behind him." 

He was buried with military honours in the 
little parish church beside his home in Buckingham- 
shire, not far from where he died ; but the most 
fitting epitaph upon him is not above his grave, but 
upon his bust at Stowe, where it is said : " With 
great courage and consummate abilities he began 
a noble opposition to an arbitrary court, in defence 
of the liberties of his country ; supported them in 
Parliament, and died for them in the field." 

The life of Colonel Hutchinson is of peculiar 
interest, for two reasons — first, that he was a noble 
and consistent instance of a moderate Puritan 
throughout the Civil War, and secondly, because 
the loving industry of his wife has supplied us with 
the full details of his life from day to day. In her 
Memoir we see not only the soldier and the poli- 
tician, but the man as he was in everyday life, from 
his sickly childhood, "much troubled with weak- 
nesse and tooth akes," through the years when he 
showed himself "as kinde a father, as deare a 



112 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

brother, as good a master, and as faithfull a friend 
as the world had," to the last sad months in San- 
down Castle, where, as his monument says, "he 
died after eleven months' harsh imprisonment — 
without crime or accusation — upon the nth day of 
Sept. 1664, in the 49th yeare of his age, full of joy, 
in assured hope of a glorious resurrection." 

John Hutchinson was born in September 1616, 
in the town of Nottingham, whither his father, Sir 
Thomas Hutchinson, had removed for a time from 
his neighbouring country-house of Owthorpe. 
John and his younger brother George were left 
motherless before the elder was four years old, and 
they were bred up together at the free schools of 
Nottingham and Lincoln, whence John proceeded 
to Peterhouse, Cambridge. When scarcely more 
than a youth he fell in love with and married Lucy, 
daughter of Sir Allen Apsley, Lieutenant of the 
Tower of London. His bride, according to her 
own account, was a model of early precocity, 
reading perfectly at four years old, and having so 
good a memory that when carried to hear sermons 
she could remember and repeat them exactly, 
especially, as she adds, that "being carress'd, the 
love of praise tickled me, and made me attend 
more needfully." By the time she was seven years 
old she had eight tutors for different subjects, and 



THE PURITANS 113 

had outdistanced her schoolboy brothers in Latin, 
although her instructor in this tongue was only her 
'father's chaplain, whom she describes as "a pittifull 
dull fellow." 

John Hutchinson loved his Lucy almost before 
they met, from the accounts which reached him of 
her wit, her learning, and her conversation ; and they 
were married on July 3rd, 1638, although she had 
but just recovered from the small-pox, and bore 
such severe, though temporary, marks of the malady 
that "the priest and all that saw her were affrighted 
to looke on her." The marriage was a most happy 
one. She proved herself a loving companion to 
him through weal and woe, and, as a rule, a wise 
counsellor in his difficulties and dangers ; and after 
his death she obeyed his last command by devoting 
herself tojwriting his life for the sake of his children, 
instead of sorrowing overmuch for his loss, thereby 
showing herself to be as he said, even in her grief, 
"above the pitch of ordinary women." 

John Hutchinson was not a born soldier; he 
would have been quite content to spend his life 
quietly at Owthorpe, watching his crops, over- 
seeing his labourers, and devoting his time within- 
doors to religious study and the godly training of 
his children. So when the Civil War began at first 

he " prayed for peace," as did many a more warlike 

H 



H4 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

man than he ; but when all hope of that was past, 
he joined the Parliamentary side, and remained a 
moderate Puritan throughout his life. 

He received the name of Puritan, according to 
his wife, in the early part of the struggle. "The 
Parliament had made orders to deface the images 
in all churches ; within two miles of his house 
there was a church, where Christ upon the crosse, 
the virgin, and John, had bene fairly sett up in a 
windore over the altar, and sundry other super- 
stitious paintings, of the priest's owne ordering, 
were drawne upon the walls. When the order for 
razing out those reliques of superstition came, the 
priest only tooke downe the heads of the images, 
and laid them carefully up in his closett, and would 
have had the church officers to have certified that 
the thing was done according to order. Whereupon 
they came to Mr. Hutchinson, and desir'd him that 
he would take the paynes to come and view their 
church, which he did, and upon discourse with the 
parson, persuaded him to blott out all the super- 
stitious payntings, and breake the images in the 
glasse ; which he consented to, but being ill- 
affected, was one of those who began to brand Mr. 
Hutchinson with the name of Puritane." 

It is sad to think of the wealth of beauty once 
dedicated by loving hands and pure hearts to God's 



THE PURITANS 115 

sanctuary, in saintly image or pictured window, of 
which few traces have been left to us by those, 
however honest, once " branded with the name of 
Puritane." 

The King's standard had now been set up at 
Nottingham, and men were ranging themselves on 
the one side or the other, but as yet Mr. Hutchin- 
son did not feel any "cleare call from the Lord" 
to fight, although this pacific attitude did not prevent 
his diverting, by persuasion, a supply of plate and 
horses which were going to the King, into the camp 
of the Parliamentary general, Essex. 

"The joy of battle," so strong in most of the 
Cavaliers, was quite absent from his nature, and 
though only his enemies said that he lacked courage, 
his wife herself owns that "he was never by his 
good will in a fight, but either by chance or neces- 
sity." However, he could not long hold himself 
apart from the struggle, and he and his brother 
took service together in Colonel Pierrepoint's regi- 
ment of foot, George as a major and John as 
lieutenant-colonel. 

He was made governor of the castle of Notting- 
ham, and as holder of that post, and afterwards as 
governor of the town itself, he did good service on 
the Parliamentary side. 

In 1643 his father died, and Colonel Hutchinson 



n6 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

succeeded him as member for Nottingham, which 
gave him a further interest in the town. 

His post of governor was not an easy one. He 
was beset with difficulties both within and without ; 
constantly harassed by sallies or expected sallies 
from the Royalist forces, and also beset within the 
town by constant disputes and jealousies among 
his colleagues. He seemed to lack the power 
of managing men peaceably in critical situations ; 
more than once he went up to London to ask 
Parliamentary aid in settling the disputes with the 
committee of management at Nottingham, and 
though he repulsed the enemy over and over again, 
even when they had entered the town and burned 
part of it, he did not seem to attach his subordi- 
nates strongly to his own person. One Captain 
Palmer, for instance, after a successful repulse of 
the Royalists, was so wroth with the governor and 
his wife for treating the wounded prisoners with 
kindness, and inviting the officers to supper, that 
he "bellow'd lowdly against him, as a favourer of 
mallignants and cavaliers." Moderation at that 
time found favour with no party. On the 16th 
of January, 1646, the Royal forces gathered at 
Newark, marched on Nottingham, and a severe 
engagement took place. The gallant brother of 
Lady Newcastle, Sir Charles Lucas, and Colonel 



THE PURITANS 117 

Cartwright commanded the besieging army. They 
found the outworks weak, and the men not firm 
against their attack, so that, at the first, "the 
cavaliers marcht in with such terror to the garrison, 
and such gallantry, that they startled not when one 
of their leading files fell before them all at once, 
but marcht boldly over the dead bodies of their 
friends, under their enemies' cannon, and carried 
such valliant dreadfullness about them, as made 
very couragious stout men recoyle." 

But the governor, whose spirit was great, in spite 
of his yearnings for peace, rallied his men in the 
castle, and by threats and encouragement he 
brought back their flagging energy, so that the 
fortune of the day was changed ; "the roundheads 
sallied forth . . .furiously . . . and surpriz'd them; 
while they were secure the castle would not have 
made so bold an attempt." The retreating Cavaliers 
tried to set fire to the town as they went, by shoot- 
ing their pistols into the thatched roofs of the 
houses, but the fire did not spread, and the garrison 
followed up their advantage, and chased their foes 
in confusion from the town. 

After this triumph Colonel Hutchinson received 
commendation from the Parliament for the public 
service he had rendered, and a promise of ^1000 
to the town. The dreaded Prince Rupert was in 



n8 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

the neighbourhood, and the garrison at Nottingham 
feared daily that he would come with his dashing 
cavalry to raise the siege ; but the days passed, and 
he did not appear. 

The disputes within the town waxed hotter, and 
at length Colonel Hutchinson went again to London 
to lay the case before Parliament. A settlement of 
the points at issue was arrived at, and he returned 
with a pocketful of orders to committee, officers, 
and soldiers, and was received at Nottingham 
"with all imaginable expressions of love and 
honour, and all the solemnities the time and place 
would afford," including a welcoming procession 
of the mayor and his brethren " in their scarlette." 
But as long as he continued governor of Notting- 
ham these same disputes recurred as to the manage- 
ment of affairs both civil and military in the town. 
Colonel Hutchinson was too quick-tempered, and 
too much lacking in self-control to be a wise guide to 
what his wife describes in quaint Puritan phraseology 
as these " factious little people." 

When the country round Nottingham settled 
down into something like tranquillity, the governor 
returned to his home at Owthorpe ; but this he 
found in a sorry state, as it had been left unin- 
habited during his absence, and plundered by 
Royalist soldiers, so that " it was so ruinated that 



THE PURITANS 119 

it could not be repair'd." His pay was in arrears, 
and he was hard pressed for money ; his health 
oegan to suffer, and he fell a prey to rheumatic 
pains, and "violent torture upon all his joynts." 
Ii this state he removed himself and his family 
tc London, and so was the more easily accessible 
to be chosen as a member of the Council which 
tred King Charles. 

He therefore is one of those against whose name, 
in the " Dictionary of National Biography," appears 
the word "regicide." His conviction of the neces- 
sity for the King's death was honest, and the result 
of prayer and thought ; " although," says his wife, 
" he did not then believe but it might one day come 
to be againe disputed among men, yett both he and 
others thought they could not refuse it without 
giving up the people of God, whom they had led 
forth and engaged themselves unto by the oath of 
God, into the hands of God's and their enemies, 
and therefore he cast himselfe upon God's protec- 
tion, acting according to the dictates of a con- 
science which he had sought the Lord to guide." 

His conduct during the Protectorate was always 
marked by moderation ; he had little in common 
with Cromwell himself, by whom he was somewhat 
slighted, and his happiest years were those spent 
after his retirement from public life, at his own 



120 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

country home, among his children, his tenants, and 
his neighbours. 

He was fond both of music and of art, and col- 
lected many paintings while in London, with which 
he beautified Owthorpe on his return. 

He superintended with delight the education of 
his children, in languages, science, music, and 
dancing, "and was himself their instructor .n 
humillity, sobrietie, and all godlinesse and vertue" 
And being a lover of peace and also hospitable, he 
found his house "much resorted to" by neigh- 
bours who till lately had fought in opposite camps. 

So the time wore on until the day of reckoning 
came, when Charles II. "enjoyed his own again," 
and the regicides stood forth for trial. Here, once 
more, Hutchinson's moderation saved him ; he was 
not looked upon as dangerous, and he had promi- 
nent Royalists among his wife's kinsmen. His 
speech, too, in his own defence, was full of quiet 
dignity : " If he had err'd," he said, " it was the 
inexperience of his age, and the defect of his judg- 
ment, and not the mallice of his heart ; . . . and if 
the sacrifice of him might conduce to the publick 
peace and settlement, he should freely submit his 
life and fortunes to their dispose." 

The sentence upon him was not the most ex- 
treme ; his life was spared, and he was deprived 



THE PURITANS 121 

only of his seat in Parliament, and of power to take 
further part in public life. 

But he was henceforth a marked man, and was 
constantly suspected of participation in plots against 
the new King's government, and was finally on this 
ground sentenced to imprisonment in the Tower. 

There life was not made easy by the hard gover- 
nor, unless prisoners were able to pay more for 
attention than Hutchinson either could or would, 
and it was no hardship therefore when he was re- 
moved to Sandown Castle, near Deal, in Kent. 

But here the conditions of life were unhealthy in 
the extreme, and though at one time he was allowed 
to walk on the sea-shore, and to sort the cockle- 
shells his daughter brought him, the sleeping-room 
in which he was confined was such that the doctor 
said it caused his death. 

Whatever was the cause his health rapidly failed. 
While his wife had gone to Owthorpe to fetch their 
children, that they might live near his place of 
confinement, he was seized with a violent fever, 
and died before her return. 

When the end seemed near his brother told him 
that there was no more hope, and the Colonel re- 
plied, "very composedly and chearefully " : " The 
will of the Lord be done, I am ready for it." 

He seemed to have felt sometimes as if he had 



122 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

not had sufficient personal degradation in the fall 
of his party, and this feeling may have prompted 
the last words he uttered : " 'Tis as I would have 
it ; 'tis where I would have it." 

They brought his body back with all honour, 
in a "handsome private equipage," by Canterbury 
and London, to the quiet country home where he 
had been so happy ; and there he was laid to his 
rest, and " bewailed all the way he came allong by 
all those who had bene better acquainted with his 
worth then the strangers among whom he died." 

While the Puritans in England established their 
position by years of Civil War and bloodshed, 
beyond the sea others of their race were under- 
going hardships of a different kind in order to lay 
a firm foundation for the old religion in the 
colonies of America. 

It was in 1620, five years before the accession 
of Charles I., that the Mayflower went upon her 
well-remembered voyage. The English Indepen- 
dents who had suffered under the severity of 
James Land Whitgift, had crossed over to Holland, 
and lived there for some years ; but now that the 
colonies of America were becoming better known, 
these exiles formed the bold plan of leaving the 
dependence of a foreign land, and making for 
themselves and their children a home beyond the 



THE PURITANS 123 

sea. They longed to become once more an Eng- 
lish-speaking nation, instead of outcasts in a foreign 
land. The Dutch had treated them with great 
kindness, but they wanted a country of their own, 
where they might worship God in their own way. 

So they obtained, with some difficulty, a patent 
from the Virginia Company, and prepared them- 
selves to go forth, with their wives and their little 
ones, into the new country; for "they knew they 
were Pilgrims, and looked not much on those 
things, but lifted up their eyes to Heaven, their 
dearest country, and quieted their spirits." 

They had two ships, the Mayflower and the 
Speedwell, and these started separately from Hol- 
land, and joined company at Southampton, where 
they were to take up any English pilgrims who 
were ready to share the enterprise. 

Shortly after their departure from England the 
Speedwell proved to be in an unseaworthy con- 
dition, so she had to put back again, with some of 
her passengers, and the Mayflower went out alone 
upon the voyage, from Plymouth to Cape Cod, 
which took sixty-seven days in all. 

The pilgrims had many minor troubles to en- 
counter during the voyage, storms and cross winds, 
slight mishaps to the little vessel herself, and much 
sea-sickness among the passengers. Governor 



124 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

Bradford gives some quaint details ; among them 
the following : — 

" I may not omit here a special work of God's 
Providence. There was a proud and very profane 
young man, one of the seamen, of a lusty able 
body, which made him the more haughty. He 
would always be contemning the poor people in 
their sickness, and cursing them daily with grievous 
execrations, and did not let to tell them, that he 
hoped to help to cast half of them overboard 
before they came to their journey's end, and to 
make merry with what they had. And if he were 
by any gently reproved, he would curse and swear 
most bitterly. 

" But it pleased God, before they came half seas 
over, to smite this young man with a grievous 
disease, of which he died in a desperate manner, 
and so was himself the first that was thrown over- 
board. Thus his curses light on his own head, and 
it was an astonishment to all his fellows ; for they 
noted it to be the just hand of God upon him." 

Each sentence in this little narrative shows the 
austere Puritan feeling which the pilgrims carried 
with them into the new country. 

So they went upon their way, and " in sundry of 
these storms, the winds were so fierce and the seas 
so high, as they could not bear a knot of sail, but 



THE PURITANS 125 

were forced to hull for divers days together. And 
in one of them, as they thus lay at hull, in a mighty 
storm, a lusty young man, called John Howland, 
coming upon some occasion above the gratings, was 
with the seel of the ship thrown into the sea ; but 
it pleased God that he caught hold of the topsail 
halliards, which hung overboard, and ran out at 
length ; yet he held his hold, though he was sundry 
fathoms under water, till he was hauled up by the 
same rope to the brim of the water ; and then, with a 
boat-hook and other means got into the ship again, 
and his life saved. And though he was something 
ill with it, yet he lived many years after, and be- 
came a profitable member, both in Church and 
Common Wealth." Such were the different fates 
upon the voyage of two " lusty young " men ! 

And in November, 1620, the pilgrims landed at 
Cape Cod, south-east of Boston, and there " they 
fell upon their knees and blessed the God of 
heaven, who had brought them over the vast and 
furious ocean, and delivered them from all the 
perils and miseries thereof ; again to set their feet 
on the firm and stable earth, their proper element." 
And from that small band, only just over a hundred 
in all, has sprung the great mass of New England 
Puritanism. Their struggles at first were great, they 
had to fight diificulties of every kind, want and 



i 2 6 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

poverty, sickness and hostile neighbours, and, 
hardest of all, dissensions among their own num- 
ber, but the sturdy Puritan resolution which had 
braved the terrors of emigration in the seventeenth 
century, was sufficient for the task, and the Planta- 
tion at Plymouth, in New England, was established. 
We must not follow the pilgrims further, though 
their story is one of ever fresh fascination ; it is 
with the Puritans in the Old Country we have to 
deal. But when we study the lives which were freely 
laid down in England in the service of Puritanism, 
on the fields of Naseby and Marston Moor, let us not 
forget those others of our own race and kindred, 
whose sacrifice was perhaps as great, who went out 
from their homes in simple faith in God, to seek a 
resting-place where His Name could be honoured 
in the way they thought most fit, and who have 
helped to build up a mighty nation, upon the 
surest of all foundations, trust in God and honest 
hard work. 



CHAPTER V 

STRAFFORD AND PYM 

In Thomas Wentworth, afterwards Earl of Straf- 
ford, we see the one man whom the Parliamentary 
party had really reason to fear ; for while he 
lived he supplied to the royal cause that which, 
without him, they lacked : ability to conceive a 
consistent form of policy, and indomitable will to 
carry it out. 

In the years that were coming, when Charles in 
conscientious indecision promised one thing and 
performed another, and Rupert spilled the blood of 
England's knighthood in gallant charges that led to 
nothing, the Royalists might well long to hear again 
the silent voice, and to see the tall, stooping figure 
and stern dark face of him who had quelled — by 
whatever means — anarchy and rebellion in Ireland, 
and had been the real strength of the King's power 
in England, until sacrificed by the culpable weak- 
ness of the King himself. 

Thomas Wentworth was born of a good old York- 
shire family on Good Friday, April 13th, 1593. He 

127 



128 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

had the ordinary education of the time, and after 
leaving St. John's College, Cambridge, he spent the 
usual year in foreign travel, under the care of a 
tutor. 

From his youth he loved public life, and was 
always anxious to take part in it ; the first public 
office he held was that of Keeper of the Yorkshire 
Records, the duties of which he discharged for two 
years from the age of twenty-two. 

At first, in the early disputes between the King 
and the Parliament, Strafford sided against Charles, 
and it was not until the session of 1628 that he 
joined with Archbishop Laud, and became the ablest 
adviser the King ever had. 

He was created Baron Wentworth, and was made 
President of the Council of the North, and in York- 
shire he worked with untiring energy, as he did 
afterwards in Ireland, to subdue all opposition to 
his royal master. 

He was a man of great ability, clear-sighted, loyal, 
and sincere, and he saw that the only possible way 
in which Charles could keep his royal power under 
the existing state of affairs, was by making himself 
such an absolute king as Louis XIII. had become 
with Richelieu's aid. He saw that half measures 
were no longer possible, but he believed that by 
military despotism England might be brought again 







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STRAFFORD AND PYM 129 

into such a state of peaceful subjection as she had 
enjoyed under Queen Elizabeth. 

But the all-important factor which he did not 
take into consideration was the inherent difference 
in the characters of Elizabeth and Charles ; with 
his keen insight into men's minds, Wentworth yet 
never seemed to grasp how certain of failure was 
any plan which depended on the sincerity of the 
King. 

The passionateloyalty which he showed to Charles, 
both in life and in death, would have roused a 
warmer feeling in most men's breasts than ever 
seemed to thrill that of the curiously cold-hearted 
King, whose sufferings, no doubt, warped his whole 
nature. Not even Strafford's worst enemy can do 
other than admire the absolute surrender of himself, 
his fortunes, and his life, at the feet of a monarch 
whom he had never seen in prosperity. 

In his opening speech as President of the 
Northern Council, he states his idea of the relative 
position of a king and his people. 

"Princes," he says, "are to be the indulgent 
nursing fathers to their people ; their modest liber- 
ties, their sober rights ought to be precious in 
their eyes, the branches of their government be for 
shadow, for habitation, the comfort of life. They 
repose safe and still under the protection of their 



130 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

sceptres. Subjects, on the other side, ought with 
solicitous eyes of jealousy to watch over the pre- 
rogatives of a crown. The authority of a king is 
the keystone which closeth up the arch of order 
and government, which contains each part in due 
relation to the whole, and which, once shaken and 
infirmed, all the frame falls together into a confused 
heap of foundation and battlement, of strength and 
beauty. Furthermore, subjects must lay down their 
lives for the defence of kings freely till these offer 
out of their store freely." 

Such was Wentworth's ideal of the relationship 
which should exist between prince and subject, and 
to that ideal he died a martyr. 

His rule in Yorkshire was hard and stern ; he 
brooked no opposition to his will, he maintained 
order, but with a heavy hand, and he cared for no 
man's criticism. He was always firm in the con- 
viction that his method of restoring and keeping 
peace was the right one, and none could shake his 
faith in himself. 

" If," he says, in another of his Yorkshire 
speeches, " I do not fully comply with that public 
and common protection which good kings afford 
their good people, let me perish, and let no man 
pity me. In the meantime none of these clamours 
or other apprehensions shall shake me or cause me 



STRAFFORD AND PYM 131 

to decline my master's honour and service, thereby 
to soothe these popular frantic humours, and if I 
miscarry this way I shall not even then be found 
either so indulgent to myself or so narrow-hearted 
towards my master as to think myself too good to 
die for him." It almost seemed as if a prophetic 
feeling that his loyalty to Charles might be " even 
unto death" was with Wentworth throughout his 
career, but that he should have his power taken 
from him, and the very master for whom he suffered 
writing that M I must lay by the thought of imploing 
you heereafter in my affaires," he never contem- 
plated, even when he goes on to speak of the 
"calumny and hatred" towards him of some "ill- 
disposed persons"; he evidently always thought of 
the King loyal as hei was himself, and of their 
sinking or swimming together. " I have not so 
learnt of my master," he says, "nor am I so indul- 
gent to my own ease as to see his affairs suffer ship- 
wreck whilst I myself rest secure in harbour. No, 
let the tempest be never so great, I will much rather 
put forth to sea, work forth the storm, or at least be 
found dead with the rudder in my hands." To such 
a nature as Wentworth's one can well believe that 
the bitterest thought of all at the end, after that of 
his master's desertion, was that the rudder was not 
in his dying hands. 



132 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

He regarded the absolute power of the King as 
identical with the happiness and well-being of the 
people, and to the strengthening of that power he 
devoted all his energies of brain, and heart, and 
hands. 

In 1632 he was appointed Lord Deputy of Ire- 
land, and found that ill-starred country in a more 
than ordinary condition of misfortune and misrule. 
It was heavily in debt, without proper soldiers or 
arsenals, the coasts beset by pirates, against whom 
no defence was forthcoming but that furnished 
by two pinnaces ; Dublin Castle, where the Viceroy 
should lodge, was in a state of ruinous dilapidation, 
and the churches in that city were being used either 
for tennis-courts or stables. Such was the state of 
affairs when Wentworth was appointed Lord Deputy, 
and though his methods were hard, and his justice 
pitiless, he succeeded in the nine years of his 
government in evolving out of this chaos some- 
thing like order and prosperity. Between the date 
of his appointment and his arrival in Dublin, he 
lost his second wife, to whom he was much 
attached, and who was the mother of his only son, 
the "dearest Wili," to whom one of his last letters 
from the Tower was written. He had a tender 
affection for his children, and the knowledge of 
their pitiable condition were he to die condemned 



STRAFFORD AND PYM 133 

as a traitor, seemed one of the reasons for which he 
most earnestly desired to live. 

Wentworth's one method of government was that 
of force, and as that has always seemed to be the 
most effective agent in Ireland, perhaps it naturally 
followed that his was one of the most successful 
rules there, judging only by the results at the time. 
He established and trained a large Irish army, and 
so turned to valuable use that innate love of fight- 
ing which is born in every Irishman ; and for the 
support of this army he managed to get large 
grants from the Irish Parliament. 

His own luggage, containing jewels of great 
value, had been seized by pirates when he was 
coming over to take up his appointment, and he 
made up his mind that such a state of things 
should soon cease to be possible. He therefore pro- 
vided, partly at his own expense, partly by money 
wrung with difficulty from the Admiralty, two ships 
called the Antelope and the Whelp; these were 
commanded by daring and reckless seamen of the 
Elizabethan type, who, with Wentworth in the 
background to support them, soon drove the enemy 
from the Irish Channel. 

One of his next efforts was that of planting indus- 
tries in Ireland, by which the people might gradually 
become able to support and enrich themselves. 



134 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

He sent to Holland for flax and hemp seed at 
his own expense, and brought over also workmen 
from the Netherlands to teach the beginnings of 
the linen trade ; he carried out the system of 
"Thorough," which was the private name he ap- 
plied to his policy, in all matters political, civil, 
and ecclesiastical throughout the country. 

He reformed the Protestant Church, which had 
grown lax and careless ; he rebuilt and repaired 
the places of worship which had either been de- 
stroyed or were being used for secular purposes, 
and the Catholics he treated with justice, allowing 
them more freedom of worship than they received 
in England. By his high-handed measures he 
made many foes, and besides these he had to 
struggle constantly with his personal enemy, the 
gout, from which he suffered more severely year by 
year. Possibly the climate of Ireland aggravated 
the disease, and his life of unending activity left 
him with less strength wherewith to combat the 
attacks ; and as time went on his movements were 
often delayed, and his plans frustrated, while he lay 
chained to a sick-bed in paroxysms of suffering for 
which, in that age, there was little alleviation. 

In his government of Ireland Wentworth showed 
an utter disregard of the feelings and natures of 
every class of inhabitant. He hated the wild 



STRAFFORD AND PYM 135 

disorder which was natural and pleasant to the 
Celt, and he had little sympathy with the sturdier 
Ulsterman, or the Scotch Presbyterian colonist. 
The plan which he made of planting out Connaught, 
as Munster had been planted out in the time of 
Elizabeth, rilled all classes alike with indignation, 
and though he was, for the time, a successful ruler, 
he was feared and obeyed, but never loved. The 
action which gained him perhaps the greatest 
unpopularity of all was that against Lord Mount- 
norris, the Vice-Treasurer of Ireland. This noble- 
man was a characteristically hot-tempered and 
ill-regulated specimen of the Irish gentry of the day, 
and from the first he and Wentworth agreed but ill 
together. The Lord Deputy brooked no opposition 
to his will in the country he had undertaken to rule, 
and he ignored and slighted Mountnorris in every 
possible way. Then two young kinsmen of the 
Vice-Treasurer, a brother and a cousin, further 
aggravated the differences between the two, one by 
omitting to greet the Viceroy with the deference 
which he always exacted from subordinates, and 
the other by accidentally committing a far more 
painful offence, in dropping a stool upon Went- 
worth's gouty foot. 

Mountnorris used words which were construed 
into a wish that more harm had been done to the 



136 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

vice-regal person than could be effected by a blow, 
even on a foot suffering from the most painful of 
all maladies. Wentworth took the matter up 
seriously, complained to the King, and got power 
to summon the offender to a court-martial. This 
in Ireland, where a word and a blow — even on a 
gouty foot — have always gone together, roused, 
naturally, unbounded indignation. 

The court-martial was held in Dublin Castle. 
Mountnorris was accused of mutiny against the 
Viceroy, and was sentenced to death. Even under 
such a despotic rule as Wentworth's, the penalty 
seems amazingly in excess of the crime. 

The sentence was of course remitted by the 
King ; but Mountnorris was expelled from the 
army, and approval was given to the measures 
taken for his trial, as having " calmed and silenced 
all those spirits that began to make a noise." But 
there is a calm which is worse than ruffled waters, 
the calm which precedes a tempest; and the waters 
were rising gradually that were to overwhelm 
Wentworth, even when he seemed most secure. 
The fatal defect for his own well-being in his sys- 
tem of "Thorough " was that he made enemies of 
every class and rank; enemies not powerful enough 
to withstand his will at the moment, but who bided 
their time for revenge, and nourished against him 



STRAFFORD AND PYM 137 

a fierce hatred, all the more bitter because of its 
suppression. 

In 1640 the Viceroy was created Earl of Strafford. 
Charles at length recognised what a valuable 
Minister he had in him, and tried in every way to 
show his appreciation. He was invested with the 
order of the Garter, and was given the title of 
Lord-Lieutenant, instead of Lord Deputy of Ireland, 
which title had not been used since Elizabeth's day. 
But the more absolute his power became, and the 
more he used that power, together with his private 
fortune, his talents, and his whole soul in the 
service of the King, the fiercer grew the hatred 
and distrust of his foes, both in Ireland and in 
England. 

The Short Parliament met, and was dissolved. 
Pym and Hampden demanded redress of griev- 
ances, and got nothing but vague promises. The 
Scotch Covenanters marched over the border to 
fight the party which contained their great enemy, 
Laud, and the King had to summon to his aid 
the one general on whom he could most thoroughly 
rely. 

When the command reached him, Strafford was 
so ill that he could not at once obey it, but he 
came as soon as he could, never again to leave 
England. 



138 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

"Broken with his late sickness," he could not 
reach the army in time to avert its defeat by 
the Scotch, and the next inevitable measure was 
the summoning of the Long Parliament on Nov- 
ember 3rd, 1640. 

The Commons were indignant beyond all measure 
with the King, but as yet their innate loyalty made 
them rather seek to lay the blame on his advisers, 
and to demand vengeance on them rather than on 
himself. And, as the ablest and the most im- 
portant, so Strafford was the first to suffer. 

He was tried and condemned, less really for 
what he had done in the past, than for what it 
was feared he might enable the King to do in the 
future. 

So the unjust ceremony called a trial took place, 
and its pathetic details are known to all. The tall 
stooping figure was brought daily from the Tower, 
and made at times to kneel at the bar, at others, 
by reason of extreme bodily suffering, he was 
allowed the luxury of a chair. 

Treason against the people was the charge 
brought against him, which was not an existing 
crime ; treason being crime against the ruling 
sovereign. But it mattered little how the accusa- 
tion was worded, or how the speeches went ; the 
Commons had met with the intention of removing 



STRAFFORD AND PYM 139 

their mightiest opponent. It was in their power to 
do so ; they were but human, and they did it. 

It is not on them that the stain rests, never to 
be wiped away, of disloyalty to one who had freely 
given his all. Before the meeting of the House, 
Strafford, foreseeing his danger, had been anxious 
to return to Ireland, but Charles had bade him 
stay, assuring him that, "as he was King of Eng- 
land, he was able to secure him from any danger, 
and that the Parliament should not touch a hair 
of his head." 

The weak impeachment was soon over ; then 
came Strafford's famous speech in answer to it, 
which, in spite of broken health and failing strength, 
rang with all his old fire and eloquence. " Under 
favour, my Lords," he said, " I do not conceive 
that there is either statute law or common law that 
hath declared this endeavouring to subvert the 
fundamental laws to be high treason. . . . And 
sure it is a very hard thing I should be here 
questioned for my life and honour upon a law that 
is not extant, that cannot be showed ! . . . For 
certainly it were better a great deal to live under 
no law but the will of man, and confide ourselves 
in human wisdom as well as we could, and comply 
with that will, than to live under the protection of 
that law as we think, and then a law should be 



140 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

made to punish us for a crime precedent to the 
law. Then, I conceive, no man could be safe if 
that should be admitted." The speech lasted more 
than two hours, until it reached its pathetic end in 
the entreaty for pity on his little son and daughters : 
" My Lords, I have now troubled your lordships a 
great deal longer than I should have done. Were 
it not for the interest of these pledges that a saint 
in heaven left me, I should be loth, my Lords " 
. . . here, for a moment, even his fortitude gave 
way, and he left the sentence unfinished ; . . . 
"what I forfeit for myself it is nothing. But I 
confess that my indiscretion should forfeit for them, 
it wounds me very deeply. You will be pleased to 
pardon my infirmity ; something I should have 
said, but I see I shall not be able, and therefore I 
will leave it. And now, my Lords, I thank God I 
have been, by His good blessing towards me, 
taught that the afflictions of the present life are not 
to be compared with that eternal weight of glory 
that shall be revealed hereafter. And so, my Lords, 
even so, with all humility and with all tranquillity 
of mind, I do submit myself clearly and freely unto 
your judgment, whether that righteous judgment 
shall be to life or death. Te Deum laudamus, te 
Dominum confitemur." 

Never, surely, have nobler words been uttered 



STRAFFORD AND PYM 141 

by a sorely stricken and suffering man, pleading for 
the sake of his children for the life which he had 
done nothing to forfeit ! One more chance re- 
mained, would the King sign the Bill of Attainder ? 
Would he for whom Strafford had given all, health, 
wealth, strength, and brain, be the one to write the 
final word which would send him out to die. 

Four days before the Bill passed the Lords, 
Strafford had written to the King with passionate 
loyalty, freely offering his life in his master's cause, 
and begging him to assent to the Bill as best for 
himself without thought of his servant. But he 
shows how hard had been the struggle to give up 
the hope of life for his children's sake, in the 
pathetic words : " To say, sir, that there hath not 
been a strife in me were to make me less man than, 
God knoweth, my infirmities make me; and to call 
a destruction upon myself and young children 
(where the intentions of my heart, at least, have 
been innocent of the great offence), may be believed 
will find no easy consent from flesh and blood." 

But he could hardly have thought that so religious 
and high-minded a King could break his plighted 
word in so serious a matter as that involving the 
death of his most faithful servant. This, however, 
came to pass. On May 9th, after two days spent in 
indecision, and in vainly asking the opinion of his 



142 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

advisers, when Bishop Juxon alone had the courage 
to tell him he ought to refuse his consent, Charles 
signed the death warrant of the man who had been 
his best friend. And when the signature was shown 
to him the Earl tasted indeed the bitterness of 
death, and in spite of his willing sacrifice the heart- 
broken cry was wrung from his lips, " Put not your 
trust in princes nor in the sons of men, for in them 
there is no salvation." 

The night before his death he wrote from the 
Tower a letter of farewell to his young son, bidding 
him care for his sisters, show respect to his step- 
mother, and follow diligently the advice of those 
friends to whose care he confided him. "Serve 
God diligently morning and evening," he says, " and 
recommend yourself unto Him, and have Him before 
your eyes in all your ways." And at the close of 
the letter he solemnly enjoins on the boy the duty 
of forgiveness. " Be sure," he says, " to avoid as 
much as you can to enquire after those that have 
been sharp in their judgments towards me, and I 
charge you never to suffer thought of revenge to 
enter your heart ; but be careful to be informed, 
who were my friends in this prosecution, and to 
them apply yourself to make them your friends 
also. . . . And once more do I, from my very soul, 
beseech our gracious God to bless and govern you 



STRAFFORD AND PYM 143 

in all, to the saving you in the day of His visitation, 
and join us again in the communion of His blessed 
saints, where is fulness and bliss for evermore." 

On the way to the scaffold he knelt beneath the 
window of the room where the archbishop was 
confined, and the aged Laud gave him his blessing ; 
and on the scaffold, whither Laud was soon to follow 
him, and where Charles himself was to stand only 
nine years later, was beheaded Thomas Wentworth, 
Earl of Strafford, on May 12th, 1641, in the forty- 
ninth year of his age. 

If, in the early years of the struggle between King 
and Parliament, Strafford was the mainspring of 
the Royalist cause, on the other side the same may 
be said of Hampden's friend, John Pym. 

Pym was born in 1584, and was the eldest son of 
Alexander Pym of Brymore, near Bridgwater, in 
Somersetshire. 

He was educated at Broadgates Hall, now Pem- 
broke College, in Oxford. He became a student at 
the Middle Temple, and had a seat in Parliament 
from 1 6 14. 

In the first Parliament of Charles I., in 1625, Pym 
sat as member for Tavistock, and from the beginning 
of Charles' reign Pym seemed to see more clearly 
than any one else how incapable of upright dealing 
was that unhappy monarch, and how necessary it 



144 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

had become to put the government of England 
upon a broad constitutional basis. 

Pym began the work which was to be finished by 
Cromwell. Throughout the rest of his life, from 
1625, his is the most prominent figure in the House 
of Commons, the portly form, round head, great 
brow, and the "grave grey eyes," which never 
flinched before the gaze of any man, until they fell 
under the haggard glance of his old comrade, 
Strafford, whom he had condemned to a traitor's 
death. 

Pym's interest, like that of Cromwell's, was largely 
concerned with the religious side of the rebellion, 
especially in the beginning, and the subject with 
which he chiefly occupied himself during Charles' 
first Parliament was the execution of the penal laws 
against Roman Catholics. 

But in the Session of 1628 he took a stronger 
stand against the King, and was one of the principal 
supporters of the Petition of Right, brought forward 
by Coke, the late Chief Justice. None liked to put 
into words how weak a bond was now considered 
the Royal promise, till Pym rose boldly in his place, 
and declared that, "they did not want the King's 
word, for it could add nothing to his coronation 
oath. What was wanted was a rule by which the 
King's action should in future be guided." 



STRAFFORD AND PYM 145 

And in answer to further argument from the 
Royal supporters, Pym spoke in what must have 
been sorrowful irony : " Truly, Mr. Secretary, I am 
of the same opinion that I was, that the King's oath 
is as powerful as his word." 

The Petition of Right was signed by Charles, and 
the spirit of its demands was denied before a few 
days were over. 

In the next year Pym was present at the disorderly 
scene when the Speaker was held in his chair by 
force, after announcing the Royal decree that the 
House should adjourn. Before the members left 
their places Sir John Eliot moved three resolutions : 
one against religious innovations, and the other two 
against illegal taxation ; and, amid a scene of the 
most dire confusion, the House declared them 
carried. Eliot, in early days a friend of both Pym 
and Strafford, paid dearly for his action ; he was 
sent, with two others, to the Tower, on the charge 
of riot and sedition, and there he spent three years 
of weary suffering. He died of consumption in 
1632, and his relatives were refused permission 
by the King to bury him in the home of his 
ancestors, Charles merely writing at the foot 
of the petition : " Let Sir John Eliot's body be 
buried in the church of that parish where he 
died." 

K 



146 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

For the next eleven years no Parliament sat in 
England. 

It was largely owing to the influence of Pym that 
the Council of York urged upon Charles the neces- 
sity of at last calling another Parliament, and when 
it met in 1640, Pym took the leadership of the 
opposition, seconded by Hampden. The Short 
Parliament had sat for a month in the earlier part 
of the year, under the same leadership, and it was 
now that Pym began to earn for himself the nick- 
name given him by Royalist lampooners of " King 
Pym." 

His house in Gray's Inn Lane was the meeting- 
place for the members of the opposition ; there he 
impressed his hearers daily more and more strongly 
with the truth of his own convictions, that the 
English Constitution must be reformed, unless ruin 
was to fall upon the land. 

Pym's strength was in his moderation ; he was a 
philosophic statesman, but not a visionary one. He 
was clear-sighted, just and courageous, and he feared 
no course of action which he had once conceived 
to be right. Had he been given the helm, and his 
life been prolonged, perhaps he might have steered 
the ship through the troubled waters safe into the 
harbour, unbroken by the tempests of Civil War ; 
but this was not to be. Pym had the strongest dis- 



STRAFFORD AND PYM 147 

trust of the Queen, and he saw how fatal to the Royal 
interests was her influence on the King. He believed 
that Charles 1 efforts to set up arbitrary government 
in England were joined with Roman Catholic plots 
to destroy Protestantism in England, and Charles' 
conduct was such as to make this belief not un- 
plausible. 

He saw too that on his advisers depended from 
day to day the weak King's actions, and he urged 
in Parliament that we " be careful that he have good 
councillors about him, and to let him understand 
that he is bound to maintain the laws, and that we 
take care for the maintaining of the word of God." 
Pym was at heart a Puritan, and he never separated 
in his mind, or in his speeches, the interests of the 
kingdom from the interests of what he considered 
"true religion." 

It was he who brought in the motion for impeach- 
ment on the charge of high treason which sent the 
aged Archbishop Laud to spend the remaining 
years of his life in the Tower, and it was 
he too who first impeached, and then attainted 
his former acquaintance — some say dear friend — 
Strafford. Browning, in his play of u Strafford," 
depicts the whole scene so vividly that we are 
tempted to forget that it is not all history. It would 
be hard to conceive words more expressive of Pym's 



148 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

thoughts than those the poet puts into his mouth after 
the King's signature of Strafford's death-warrant : — 

" Have I done well ? Speak, England ! 
Whose sole sake 
I still have laboured for, with disregard to my own heart 

for whom my youth was made 
Barren, my manhood waste, to offer up 
Her sacrifice — this friend, this Wentworth here — 
Who walked in youth with me, loved me, it may be, 
And whom, for his forsaking England's cause, 
I hunted by all means (trusting that she 
Would sanctify all means) even to the block 
Which waits for him. And saying this, I feel 
No bitterer pang than first I felt, the hour 
I swore that Wentworth might leave us, but I 
Would never leave him : I do leave him now. 
I render up my charge (be witness God !) 
To England who imposed it. I have done 
Her bidding — poorly, wrongly, it may be, 
With ill effects — for I am weak, a man : 
Still, I have done my best, my human best, 
Not faltering for a moment. It is done. 

And look for my chief portion in that world 
Where great hearts led astray are turned again." 

So Strafford died, and the distrust between the 
Kins who had deserted him, and those who had 
condemned him to death because of their fear of 
his power, grew always stronger. 

Pym and his party carried the Grand Remon- 
strance, the King went to Scotland, and Pym at least 
saw plainly the connection between the two events, 



STRAFFORD AND PYM 149 

and that Scotch aid was to be demanded to coerce 
the English Parliament. 

In his speech on November 22nd, 1641, Pym re- 
ferred to plots "very near the King, all driven home 
to the court and popish party." He shared with 
Hampden and the others the strange scenes con- 
nected with Charles' impeachment of them, and, with 
his brother members, he returned in open triumph 
to the House to continue the wordy warfare with the 
Royalist party, but he well knew by this time that the 
war would soon become one of more than words. 

Then the King's standard was set up at Notting- 
ham, and Pym realised that Charles could never 
reign as a constitutional monarch, so he fought him 
as long as life lasted, with brain and strength, and 
urged on the war in every possible way. 

With other members of his party he signed the 
Covenant, and undertook to set up Presbyterianism 
in England, believing that this was the wisest 
counter-stroke to Charles' league with the Irish 
Roman Catholics. He was at the head of the 
Committee of Safety appointed for the government 
of the country when the war began, and to its 
work he gave what little strength remained to him. 

But his life was nearly over. He had been suffer- 
ing for some time with a terrible internal abscess, 
and had yet gone on with his political work from 



150 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

three in the morning almost until midnight, and on 
the 8th of December, 1643, he died at his house in 
London, just two years and a half after the execu- 
tion of Strafford. 

He had a gorgeous public funeral in Westminster 
Abbey, and Parliament voted the sum of .£10,000 to 
pay his debts and to provide for his younger children. 

His last days were clouded with the apparent 
failure of the hopes on which he had staked his all, 
and the triumph of the party in which he foresaw 
ruin to the constitution of England. Browning 
makes him beg of the King : — 

" Let me speak ! 
— Who may not speak again ; whose soul yearns 
For a cool night after this weary day : 
— Who would not have my soul turn sicker yet 
In a new task, more fatal, more august, 
More full of England's utter weal or woe." 

His clear gaze may have looked beyond the pre- 
sent troubled state of things, and seen the happier 
days for which he had worked rising beyond the 
darkness that intervened, but he, if any man, had he 
lived, could have aided towards the attainment of 
a more moderate settlement. Clarendon, his Royal- 
ist foe, says of him, "that he was the most popular 
man, and the most able to do hurt, that hath lived in 
any time." And Mr. Goldwin Smith calls him "the 
greatest member of Parliament that ever lived." 



CHAPTER VI 

LAUD AND JUXON 

The weak nature of Charles I. leant for support on 

two strong men who loved his person and upheld 

his authority throughout their lives. These were 

Thomas Wentworth and William Laud. 

Between them there could hardly have been a 

greater difference. Strafford, whose proud figure 

is that of the well-born English noble, used from 

his cradle to command, and with all the prejudices 

of his class strongly developed ; and Laud, the little, 

thin, ruddy-cheeked son of a Reading clothier, with 

nothing to bring him into prominence but what 

his own brain could effect. William Laud was born 

in Reading in 1573. He was the only son of his 

father, a well-to-do merchant, but he had numerous 

half-brothers and sisters, the children of his mother's 

former marriage. After receiving a good education 

at the grammar-school at Reading, he went up to 

Oxford, and became a scholar of Sir Thomas White's 

lately founded college of St. John's. His ability 

and his industry in both theological and Oriental 

151 



152 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

studies brought him at once into notice, and he 
soon mounted the different stages of academical 
preferment, becoming in succession lecturer, fellow, 
proctor in the university, and president of St. John's 
College. To the college — the only real home he 
ever allowed himself — Laud was devotedly attached. 
He loved to enrich and beautify its walls with the 
books and pictures he collected ; and one of the few 
private wishes he uttered, at the end of his three- 
score years and twelve of troubled pilgrimage, was 
that his body might rest beneath the altar of the 
college chapel. And this came to pass after the 
Restoration, when he was laid in his chosen resting- 
place, between the college founder and his friend 
Bishop Juxon, who had died three weeks before. 

Laud's promotion in ecclesiastical circles was 
as swift as it had been at Oxford ; he was made 
Bishop of St. David's in 1621, soon after trans- 
ferred to the See of Bath and Wells, and in 1628 
he accepted the still more important appointment 
of the Bishopric of London. 

Though a lonely man, of no family ties, and few 
strong personal friends, Laud was the friend of the 
two great Royal favourites, Buckingham and Straf- 
ford ; his views, and his system of government, were 
one with Wentworth's, and they worked and fell 
together. 




From a carbon print by Braun, Clement &■ Co., Dornach (Alsace), Paris &■ New York. 

Archbishop Laud. 

From Van Dyck's original in the Hermitage Gallery, St. Petersbiirg. 



LAUD AND JUXON 153 

He and Strafford strove loyally for the King and 
the Church, but the very strong points of Laud's 
character made him one of the worst advisers 
Charles could have had : his outlook was not 
broader than the King's own, and though he lacked 
the insincerity that was Charles' ruin, he had a 
tenacity in carrying out his purposes, and a total 
inability to feel the mind of the people or the trend 
of public opinion, which intensified the weaker side 
in the King's nature, and so tended to engulf him 
always deeper in the sea of errors and misfortunes. 

Charles honoured Laud from the beginning of 
his reign ; he chose him to preach the special ser- 
mon at the opening of his first Parliament, when 
Laud took as his text the words sadly inapplicable 
to the reign which was beginning, " When I shall 
receive the congregation I will judge according 
unto right." 

" The King," he said, " is God's immediate lieu- 
tenant upon earth, and therefore one and the same 
action is God's by ordinance and the King's by exe- 
cution, and the power which resides in the King is 
not any assuming to himself, nor any gift from the 
people, but God's power as well in as over him." 

Such a view of the kingly office, in the ears of 
such a man as Charles, could but lead to trouble 
in the state in which England was at the end of 



154 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

James I.'s reign. The King and the great Church- 
man had one point in their characters in which 
they fatally resembled one another ; they neither 
had the power of insight into the mind of the 
people, each pursued his own course of action 
without knowing, or caring to know, how that 
course was judged by others. But Laud seemed 
sometimes to foresee, in a way which his Royal 
master was incapable of doing, the dark days which 
were drawing near. 

If the Anglican Church was to remain as the 
established church of the country some such ener- 
getic man as Laud was absolutely necessary, at the 
present time, to moderate the zeal of the extreme 
Puritan party. 

During his Bishopric of London Laud devoted 
much of his time and his private fortune to the 
restoration of St. Paul's Cathedral ; but when in 
1633 he succeeded Abbott as Archbishop of Can- 
terbury, his efforts for the stricter regulation of 
public worship throughout England grew more 
vigorous than ever. 

His energy, in spite of weak health, was unspar- 
ing ; he grudged no time or thought spent in the 
work he had set before him, that of the vindication 
of the Catholic character of the Church of England. 

Men may think him right or wrong, but none can 



LAUD AND JUXON 155 

deny that had it not been for his efforts, the English 
Church would have found it well-nigh impossible to 
stem the mighty torrent of Puritan invasion. 

His teaching was that of the High Churchman, 
but not, as his enemies would affirm, of the Roman 
Catholic any more than of the Puritan. 

" Union with God was to be won," it has been 
said, in his eyes, " not by an election once made 
and for ever assured, but by the lifelong struggle 
of the obedient soul, strengthened and armed by 
all the grace-giving powers of the Church. Sacra- 
ments environed it from childhood to the grave, 
and through the power of Sacraments it nerved 
itself for the fight." 

Such was Laud's teaching, and for every means 
which could strengthen that teaching he laboured 
with heart-whole if austere devotion for the seventy- 
two years of his life. 

One of the customs which had crept into the 
Church, and which Laud set himself to abolish, 
was that of the lecturers or preachers all over the 
country. These were supported by private sub- 
scriptions, and they did more than anything else to 
spread Puritan doctrines throughout the land. 
The beneficed parson would read the authorised 
Church service to an almost empty building, and 
then the people would flock in to hear the lecture 



156 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

or sermon from a Puritan divine, clad in the black 
gown of a Geneva doctor. However instructive 
these discourses might be — and Laud, of course, 
hated the matter as well as the manner — the Arch- 
bishop upheld that such a course of procedure was 
contrary to the ordained rules of the Church. He 
insisted that the surplice should be worn by the 
preacher, and that he should read the prayers be- 
fore he gave his discourse. When Laud became 
Dean of the Chapel Royal, he brought about this 
change at the King's private service, where James I. 
had been quite willing, in his day, to dispense with 
the prayers. Laud re-established them. He says in 
his diary : " I desired his Majesty that he would 
please to be present at prayers as well as sermon 
every Sunday, and that at whatsoever part of the 
prayers he came, the priest then officiating might 
proceed to the end of the prayers. The most reli- 
gious King," he adds, " not only assented, but also 
gave me thanks." 

Another reform on which Laud insisted was the 
removal of the altars in the places of worship to the 
east end of the church, where they were to be fixed, 
and decently railed off from the rest of the chancel, 
instead of being left, as was frequently the case, in 
the middle of the church, and used for general pur- 
poses, even sometimes as seats. 



LAUD AND JUXON 157 

He obliged all who held office in the Church to 
do their duty according to what he considered that 
Church ordained. He had no mercy on bad and 
dissolute clergy, but had their cures taken from 
them. He compelled the clergy to perform the 
services according to the canons of the Church, 
and he compelled the people to attend with regu- 
larity, and with at least an outward show of rever- 
ence ; even kneeling to receive the Holy Communion 
had become unusual in many churches, but this 
was now made compulsory by Laud, who was eager 
to draw the laity quite as much as the clergy within 
the fold of church discipline. All were compelled 
to come at least three times a year to the Holy Com- 
munion, householders were obliged to see that their 
families were baptized, and that their households 
attended regularly the catechising held in the 
churches, and women were commanded to come 
to be churched the first time they left home after 
the birth of a child. 

Throughout the country the little energetic man 
carried on his work, caring neither for distrust nor 
displeasure, seeing only the one point of view — 
that of the consecrated Archbishop whose business 
it was to cast abuses out of the Church, without 
looking to the right hand or to the left: "he 
treated opposition, not as opinion to be convinced, 



158 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

but as rebellion to be crushed." And, as he and 
the King were in close sympathy with one another, 
all feeling against Laud became identified with that 
against Charles, who aided in every way the carry- 
ing out of his Archbishop's views. 

But little as he understood the English people, 
Laud understood the Scotch still less, and it was 
his endeavour to force his rule on them, as he had 
done on their brethren south of the Tweed, that 
hastened his fall. 

He had always been unpopular with the mass 
of the Scotch, to whom his form of Church 
had never appealed. He had made himself dis- 
liked at the beginning of Charles' reign, when he 
had accompanied his master to Edinburgh for the 
ceremony of his Scotch coronation, and his wish to 
enforce the English Liturgy in Scotland gave great 
dissatisfaction. 

All know the story of the reading of the service, 
according to Laud's Prayer-book, in St. Giles' 
Cathedral in Edinburgh in 1637. The congrega- 
tion of maid-servants who usually attended so as 
to secure good seats at the sermon for their mis- 
tresses, could not refrain from an expression of 
disapproval at the innovation. "The Mass is 
among us ! " they cried. " Baal is in the church ! " 
And one, whom tradition calls Jenny Geddes, found 



LAUD AND JUXON 159 

words too weak to express her feelings of indigna- 
tion, and with the inquiry, " Hoot, mon, will ye 
say Mass at my lug ? " she hurled her wooden stool 
at the head of Laud's representative, the Dean of 
the Cathedral. 

The Dean got the stool, but Laud got the odium. 
From the early days of Charles' reign, when Laud 
had been employed to draw up a list of the clergy, 
marking each man with an O or a P, to signify 
Orthodox or Puritan, the knowledge had been 
growing in the kingdom as to who was the real 
ruler of the Church and, through that, of the State 
also. 

Strafford and Laud worked out together their 
policy of "Thorough," and together it brought 
them to their death. 

The Puritan strength had been growing in the 
years when Laud's influence seemed strongest, and 
when the Long Parliament met in November 1640 
one of the first steps the Commons led by Pym 
and Hampden took, was to get rid of the man 
from whom, in conjunction with Strafford, they 
most feared opposition. 

The Archbishop was impeached and confined in 
the Tower, from which, except for trial, he never 
came forth until his death four years later. 

The first sad warning of the end came to him in 



160 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

the parting from his prison window with his old 
friend Strafford, whose turn came first. The fare- 
well interview which the condemned Earl had 
begged was denied by the Commons, but Strafford 
sent a message to the Archbishop bidding him be 
at his window when he passed out on his last 
journey. And in the prison-yard Strafford knelt 
to receive the farewell blessing of the old man, 
who bore up while there was need, but when the 
sad cortege had gone to its unjust work, fainted 
quietly away. His friendship for Strafford was 
perhaps the strongest feeling he had for human 
being, except his loyal devotion to the King. In 
his diary he writes : " Thus ended the wisest, the 
stoutest, and every way the ablest subject that this 
nation hath bred this many years. The only im- 
perfections which he had, that were known to me, 
were his want of bodily health, and a carelessness, 
or rather roughness, not to oblige any; and his 
mishaps in this last action were that he groaned 
under the public envy of the nobles, served a mild 
and a gracious prince, who knew not how to be 
or be made great ; and trusted false, perfidious, 
and cowardly men in the northern employment, 
though he had many doubts put to him about it. 
The day was after called by divers, Homicidium 
Comitis Straffordiae, 'the day of the murder of 



LAUD AND JUXON 161 

Strafford ' ; because, when malice itself could find 
no law to put him to death, they made a law of 
purpose for it." And then, as if weary of the 
earthly strife and sin, he adds simply, " God forgive 
all, and be merciful." 

For the next four years Laud had the bitter task 
of lying inactive in the Tower, and watching the 
destruction of much of his life's work. But it 
was not likely that he who saw so clearly what 
was the ideal of the Church he loved, should not 
foresee the fact that something at least of his 
work would not die with him. Intolerant, narrow- 
minded, and dogmatic he may have been, but he 
kept alight by his patience, his untiring energy, 
and his grasp of the importance of detail in 
religious matters, the clear flame of the Church 
in England, and prevented it from being quenched 
in the stream of Puritanism. His mock trial and 
his attainder were the counterpart of Strafford's, 
only that the more merciful haste which charac- 
terised the proceedings against the Earl was denied 
to the old Archbishop. 

It was in 1641 that he was impeached and com- 
mitted to the Tower. The trial did not begin until 
two years later, and he was not executed till the 
10th of January 1645. The prayer which he com- 
posed on the day of his imprisonment is a good 



162 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

index to the mind of the man himself, and to the 
way in which he accepted all that came to him 
with a sad and almost obstinate resignation, never 
analysing his own conduct or seeing his own 
limitations : " O eternal God and merciful Father, 
I humbly beseech Thee look down upon me in 
this time of my great and grievous affliction. 
Lord, if it be Thy blessed will, make mine 
innocency appear, and free both me and my pro- 
fession from all scandal thus raised on me. And 
howsoever, if Thou be pleased to try me to the 
uttermost, I humbly beseech Thee give me full 
patience, proportionable comfort, contentment with 
whatsoever Thou sendest, and an heart ready to 
die for Thy honour, the King's happiness, and the 
Church's preservation. And my zeal to these is 
all the sin yet known to me in this particular 
for which I thus suffer. Lord, look upon me in 
mercy, and for the merits of Jesus Christ pardon 
all my sins many and great, which have drawn 
down this judgment upon me ; and then in all 
things do Thou with me as seems best in Thine 
own eyes, and make me not only patient under, but 
thankful for, whatsoever Thou doest, O Lord, my 
Strength and my Redeemer. Amen." 

The trial to which the Archbishop was subjected 
was a mere mockery. As in the case of Strafford, 



LAUD AND JUXON 163 

his enemies were in power ; they wished to get rid 
of him, and they were strong enough to do so. 
In that day toleration on either side in matters of 
religion was almost unknown, and it was revenge 
for the sufferings of Puritans such as Bastwicke 
and Burton, and of Prynne who largely conducted 
the trial, that brought Laud to the scaffold. 
Prynne, a learned Puritan lawyer, never forgot 
those long hours in the pillory beside his friends 
Bastwicke and Burton — his scarred cheeks, and 
ears close-cropped beneath his lank dark hair, 
told their own tale ; and it was he who poured 
the bitterest drop in the cup Laud had to drink. 
He took the old man's diary, together with his 
private prayers, and had the diary specially cut 
and adapted to suit his purpose, and with notes 
by himself, he circulated it among the members 
of the House of Lords. 

This, to a man of Laud's reserved and sensitive 
nature, was most repugnant, though he feared no 
revelations from either the one or the other. " By 
my diary," he says, "your lordships have seen 
the passages of my life, and by my prayer-book 
the greatest secrets between God and my soul ; so 
that you may be sure you have me at the very 
bottom : yet, blessed be God, no disloyalty is 
found in the one, no popery in the other." 



164 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

The impeachment, as in Strafford's case, broke 
down, and in the same way the condemnation had 
to be sought through a Bill of Attainder. The 
question was really settled before the trial began. 
The Puritans were in power ; they were full of 
bitter memories concerning the hard measure meted 
out to them by Laud, however conscientious his 
motives, in the days of his prosperity : he was in 
their hands now, and he should suffer. They 
charged him vaguely with trying to "subvert the 
laws of the kingdom," and to "alter the true 
Protestant religion into Popery," and he an- 
swered with the simple directness shown in all 
his speeches. 

" Mr. Speaker, I am very aged, considering the 
turmoils of my life, and I daily find in myself 
more decays than I make show of, and the period 
of my life, in the course of nature, cannot be far 
off. It cannot but be a great grief unto me, to 
stand at these years thus charged before ye. Yet 
give me leave to say thus much without offence: 
whatsoever errors or faults I may have committed 
by the way, in any my proceedings, through 
human infirmity — as who is he that hath not 
offended, and broken some statute laws too, by 
ignorance, or misapprehension, or forgetfulness, 
at some sudden time of action ? — yet if God bless 



LAUD AND JUXON 165 

me with so much memory, I will die with these 
words in my mouth, 'That I never intended, 
much less endeavoured, the subversion of the 
laws of the kingdom ; nor the bringing in of 
Popish superstition upon the true Protestant reli- 
gion established by law in this kingdom.' " 

So we leave Laud, for it is needless to dwell 
on the spectacle of the venerable Archbishop 
mounting the scaffold in the face of the crowd, 
for public execution. For such a nature as his, 
the bitterness of death passed when his hand was 
taken from the rudder, and he could no longer 
guide the Ship of God's Church into the haven 
which he knew lay beyond the storms. 

His property had been confiscated before his 
death, so that his last will and testament were 
of no effect, except to show where his interests 
and affections were centred. St. John's College, 
which had always been very near his heart, was 
not forgotten by him at the end. By clause 3 in 
his will he bequeaths to the College his chapel 
plate, furniture, and books, together with five 
hundred pounds, to be invested in the purchase 
of land, for an increase of the income of fellows 
and scholars. " I have done for them already," 
he says, alluding to the frequent gifts he had 
bestowed during his lifetime on men of the 



1 66 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

College, "according to my ability, and God's 
everlasting blessing be on that place and that 
society for ever." 

The document concludes with these words : 
"Thus I forgive all the world, and heartily desire 
forgiveness of God and the world. And so again 
I commend and commit my soul into the hands 
of God the Father who gave it ; in the merits 
and mercies of our Saviour Christ who redeemed 
it, and in the peace and comfort of the Holy 
Ghost who blessed it, and in the truth and unity 
of His Holy Catholic Church, and in communion 
with the Church of England, as it yet stands estab- 
lished by law." 

The man who followed Laud closely in worldly 
positions, though they were very unlike in char- 
acter, was William Juxon. Like Laud he gradu- 
ated at St. John's College, Oxford, and like him 
he filled the posts successively of President of 
that College, Bishop of London, and Archbishop 
of Canterbury. But it is not as the holder of any 
of these offices that Juxon is remembered by every 
English man and woman, but as the one chosen 
spiritual adviser who accompanied his dearly loved 
royal master into Bunyan's Valley of the Shadow, 
who, alone among many, had the courage to bid 
that master refuse his signature to Strafford's death- 



LAUD AND JUXON 167 

warrant, and who stepped with him out on to the 
scaffold when even faithful Herbert's heart failed, 
and standing beside the block received his last 
mysterious message, " Remember." 

The fact of Juxon being a member of Laud's 
own college had great influence on his career. 
They were akin in their beliefs, and both as Presi- 
dent of St. John's and as Bishop of London, Laud 
chose Juxon to succeed him. 

Juxon had been educated at Merchant Taylors' 
School, one of the best schools of the day, and 
thence he proceeded to St. John's College, which 
has always had a connection with that school. 

After taking his degree, he officiated for six 
years as vicar of the little church of St. Giles, 
at that time outside the city walls, now in the 
most populous suburb of Oxford. He was es- 
sentially a man of peace, possessing the even 
courtesy of manner in which Laud himself was 
so lacking. Kindly, affectionate, and faithful by 
nature, he quietly maintained the opinions he 
believed to be right, through the stormy years of 
Charles' reign, and the gloom that hung over the 
Church during the Protectorate, until he took his 
part as an aged and infirm figure in the gorgeous 
pageant of Charles II.'s coronation. 

On the 29th of November 1621, on Laud's 



168 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

translation to the See of St. David's, Juxon was 
elected, on his recommendation, to succeed him 
as President of St. John's College. And here he 
spent some happy years in the work which Laud 
had planned, but had not time to undertake, that 
of revising and remodelling the ancient Statutes of 
the University. When Laud was made Arch- 
bishop, Juxon again took his place, and left Oxford 
to become Bishop of London, and his life hence- 
forward was one of labour, compared to which 
that bestowed on the University Statutes must 
have seemed light ; for besides the duties of his 
Bishopric he was made Lord Treasurer, owing to 
Laud's influence, and he devoted himself with 
conscientious care to restoring the revenue by legal 
and just methods. 

Sir Philip Warwick, who knew him well, says 
of him : u This reverend prelate was of a meek 
spirit, and of solid and steady judgment, and 
having addicted his first studies to the civil law, 
from which he took his title of doctor, though he 
afterwards took on him the ministry" — Juxon had 
entered as a student at Gray's Inn as soon as he 
took his degree, and before he was ordained — " this 
fitted him the more for secular and state affairs. 
His temper and prudence wrought so upon all 
men, that though he had the two most invidious 



LAUD AND JUXON 169 

characters both in the ecclesiastical and civil state, 
one of a bishop the other of a lord treasurer, yet 
neither drew envy on him, though the humour of 
the times tended to brand all great men in those 
employments. In the year 1635, this good and 
judicious man had the white staff put into his 
hand, and though he found the revenue low and 
much anticipated, yet without meeting with times 
peaceable and regular, and his master inclined to 
be frugal, he held up the dignity and honour of 
his Majesty's household, and the splendour of the 
court, and all public expenses, and justice in all 
contracts. So as there was as few dissatisfactions 
in his time as perchance in any, yet he cleared off 
the anticipations of the revenue and set his master 
beforehand." 

For five years he held the office of Lord High 
Treasurer, and only resigned it when the troubles 
began to thicken around his master. 

Laud's impeachment and imprisonment must 
have been a heavy grief to him ; and even heavier 
must have been his sorrow at seeing his dearly- 
loved King unable to bear the strain upon his 
fortitude, and letting himself stoop to the one 
action of his reign, most bitterly repented, the 
desertion of his faithful servant Strafford. 

Juxon must have heard the sad outpourings of 



170 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

the captive King's heart, for he was his chosen 
guide during the last weeks of his life. When he 
first met him after the sentence had been pro- 
nounced, Juxon fell at his master's feet in an 
agony of grief. But Charles, whom personal trials 
never daunted, bade him restrain his feelings : 
" Leave off this, my lord," the King said, " we 
have not time for it. Let us think of our great 
work, and prepare to meet that great God, to whom, 
ere long, I must give an account of myself. I hope 
I shall do it with peace, and that you will assist 
me therein." And the Bishop did not fail him. 
He ministered to him until the end. It was 
from Juxon's hands that the King received his last 
communion, it was Juxon's voice which preached 
the last sermon he ever heard, from the text, 
" In the day when God shall judge the secrets 
of all men by Jesus Christ, according to my 
gospel." 

It was he who read the lesson from the 27th 
chapter of St. Matthew, on the last morning of 
the King's life, and answered Charles' inquiry as to 
his choice, by telling him that it was " the proper 
lesson for the day, as appointed by the calendar " ; 
and the coincidence seemed to please and cheer 
the King, for the chapter tells of the passion of 
our Lord. 



LAUD AND JUXON 171 

Juxon waited with his royal master for the 
summons to Whitehall, and walked thither at his 
right hand from St. James' Palace. He stepped 
with him through the window of the banquet-hall, 
on to the black scaffold outside ; he held his cap, 
and kissed his hand, and consoled him to the end. 
"There is but one stage more, sir," he said when 
all was ready ; " the stage is turbulent and trouble- 
some. It is a short one, but you may consider it 
will soon carry you a very great way. It will 
carry you from earth to heaven, and there you will 
find a great deal of cordial joy and comfort." 

" I go," said the dying King, " from a corruptible 
to an incorruptible crown, where no disturbance 
can be." 

" You are exchanged," concluded the Bishop, in 
solemn farewell, "from a temporal to an eternal 
crown ; a good exchange." 

And then it was that Charles uttered his famous 
last charge to Juxon, in the one word, " Remember." 
The Bishop's own explanation was that it referred 
to a message to the Prince of Wales, bidding him 
forgive his father's enemies. 

Juxon did his part, both as mourner and as priest, 
at the solemn quiet funeral amid the snowflakes, 
when they laid the weary King to rest in St. 
George's Chapel, Windsor ; and then for a time 



172 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

the Bishop passed soberly away from the stage of 
public life. 

He had property in Gloucestershire at Little 
Compton, and there he spent the years of Oliver 
Cromwell's martial rule, helping his brother clergy 
in their poverty and often destitution, reading in 
secret the forbidden Liturgy from the Book of 
Common Prayer, to small assemblies of devoted 
Churchmen, enjoying the ordinary pursuits of a 
country gentleman, usual at the time to Bishops, 
such as hunting, to which he was devoted; and 
being the one clergyman of his day, among all 
denominations, who appeared to be able to "live 
peaceably with all men." 

In 1660 came the great event of the Restoration, 
and, in the crowning of the once exiled Prince, 
Juxon took a prominent part. 

Though old and infirm, and suffering from a 
hopeless malady, he had been made Archbishop of 
Canterbury, as the one man to whom none could 
object, so here again he followed in the footsteps 
of his admired and beloved friend Laud. Though 
too feeble to join in the coronation procession, 
Juxon set the crown upon the new King's head, 
and placed the sceptre in his hands, and as he 
administered the Holy Communion to his new 
master, his thoughts may well have gone back to 



LAUD AND JUXON 173 

the last communion of his dear dead King, and 
his eyes may have failed to see clearly the pomp 
of gold and silver, and the glitter of diamond 
coronets, because of the softly falling flakes of snow 
over a velvet pall, that memory brought before 
him. 

He only lived three years after the Restoration, 
and these he spent, with what little vigour was 
still left to him, in revising the Prayer Book and 
the conduct of the Church services. 

The Act of Uniformity was passed in 1662, and 
one year later the good Archbishop "fell on 
sleep." 

He was buried in Oxford, as he had wished, 
beneath the altar of St. John's College, where Laud 
was now laid beside him, and there they sleep to- 
gether, two noble sons of a noble College, united 
in life and death ; the one remembered always for 
the dauntless energy with which he fought the 
battle of the English Church, the other as the man 
who more than all others in those tempestuous 
days had learned the lesson to " follow peace with 
all men, and holiness, without which no man can 
see the Lord." 



CHAPTER VII 

BUNYAN 

The Puritan doctrines tended to bring into promi- 
nence men of humble origin, and one of the most 
lowly-born, whose name has become famous to 
all generations, was John Bunyan, the preaching 
tinker of Elstow. 

He was born in 1628, three years after the 
accession of Charles I., at the village of Elstow, 
about a mile from Bedford, and his childhood and 
youth were troubled by visions and heavenly voices 
such as had sent forth the French maiden Jeanne 
d'Arc to her work and to her death. But the voices 
which spoke to Bunyan, in the quiet Bedfordshire 
fields, were the introspective yearnings of the true 
Puritan for a freedom from worldly care, and a 
certainty of everlasting salvation. They did not 
call him to action as a leader in the ranks against 
King Charles — had they done so it is probable that 
his very name would by now have been forgotten ; 
they called him instead to a battle which is ever 
old, yet ever new, and the record of which he has 




John Bunyan. 

From the original by Robert White in the British Museum. 



BUNYAN 175 

left behind for the comfort and help of all that 
come after him, in his story of "The Pilgrim's 
Progress." 

Of his early life, as far as its homely incidents 
go, we know little, but something of its events may 
be gathered in the religious tract he wrote de- 
scribing his spiritual experiences, and which he 
called " Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners ; 
or, a Brief Relation of the Exceeding Mercy of 
God in Christ to His poor Servant, John Bunyan." 
His father was a tinker, and of his descent he 
writes : " It was, as is well known by many, of a 
low and inconsiderable generation ; my father's 
house being of that rank that is meanest and most 
despised of all the families in the land." 

But poor though his father was, he had sufficient 
care for his little son to send him to the neighbour- 
ing grammar-school, there to get what learning he 
could. But the boy seemed to make but scant use 
of his school-time. " To my shame," he says, " I 
confess I did soon lose that little I learnt." He was 
so bad a scholar that his wife had to teach him 
again to read, after their marriage, and the manu- 
scripts of his works were noticeable for the bad 
writing and the spelling, which was considered 
illiterate even in that unexacting age. 

He was a delicate, morbid child, constantly 



176 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

beset with troubled visions of death and judgment, 
and these were intensified, according to his own 
view, by several narrow escapes he had in youth 
from accidental death. 

" Once," he says, " I fell into a creek of the sea 
and hardly escaped drowning. Another time I fell 
out of a boat into Bedford river, but mercy yet 
preserved me alive. Besides, another time being 
in the field with one of my companions, it chanced 
that an adder passed over the highway ; so I, 
having a stick in my hand, struck her over the 
back, and having stunned her, I forced open her 
mouth with my stick, and plucked her sting out 
with my fingers ; by which act," he adds, " had 
not God been merciful unto me, I might by my 
desperateness have brought myself to mine end." 
And this feeling of special preservation followed 
him during the short period when he served in the 
army, probably in the ranks of the New Model, and 
of which his only mention is in the following 
passage : — 

"This also have I taken notice of with thanks- 
giving. When I was a soldier, I with others were 
drawn out to go to such a place to besiege it ; but 
when I was just ready to go, one of the company 
desired to go in my room ; to which when I had 
consented, he took my place, and coming to the 



BUNYAN i 77 

siege, as he stood sentinel, he was shot into the 
head with a musket bullet, and died." 

After this brief military experience he returned 
to his native village, and though only twenty, and 
exceedingly poor, he married a young wife as poor 
as himself. But she brought with her a rich 
dowry, in the shape of two small religious books, 
u The Plain Man's Pathway to Heaven," and " The 
Practice of Piety," "which her father," says 
Bunyan, "had left her when he died." 

Though so poor that they had not " so much 
household stuff as a dish or spoon betwixt " them, 
the young couple were very happy, and to- 
gether they studied their two little godly books, 
the wife doing her best to bring back to Bunyan's 
mind the half-forgotten teaching of the Bedford 
school. His nature, and the influences under which 
he came, tended to exaggerate his sense of the evil 
in himself, and he writes as if his early life had 
been spent in scenes of godless dissipation. But 
this was evidently not the case ; he joined in the 
pleasures of the other village youths, such as 
dancing, bell-ringing, and a game called "tip- 
cat " played on the green. But by one bad habit 
there is no doubt he was possessed, even from a 
child, and that was one most abhorrent to the 
strict Puritan, that of profane swearing. 

M 



178 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

" From a child," he says, " I had but few equals 
(especially considering my years, which were tender, 
being few) both for cursing, swearing, lying, and 
blaspheming the holy name of God." But it shows 
what sturdy strength of will he possessed, that he 
gave up this habit absolutely, when a young man, 
on the rebuke of a woman, and she, as he says, but 
" an ungodly wretch " herself. 

He describes the scene thus : " As I was stand- 
ing at a neighbour's shop-window, and there 
cursing and swearing, and playing the madman 
after my wonted manner, there sat within the 
woman of the house and heard me. . . . She told 
me, ' That I was the ungodliest fellow for swearing 
that ever she heard in all her life ; and that I, by 
thus doing, was able to spoil all the youth in a 
whole town, if they came but in my company.' 
At this reproof I was silenced and put to secret 
shame, and that too, as I thought, before the God 
of heaven. Wherefore, while I stood there, and 
hanging down my head, I wished with all my heart 
that I might be a little child again, that my father 
might learn me to speak without this wicked way 
of swearing." And so later on he is able to say, 
" But how it came to pass I know not ; I did from 
this time forward so leave my swearing, that it was 
a great wonder to myself to observe it. And whereas 



BUNYAN 179 

before I knew not how to speak unless I put an 
oath before, and another behind, to make my 
words have authority ; now I could, without it, 
speak better and with more pleasantness than ever 
I could before." 

Here surely we see an instance of the highest 
form of victory over evil won by the true Puritan. 
The sinner, honest enough to see the truth of the 
rebuke, though coming through an unworthy in- 
strument, feeling himself humbled, not in the eyes 
of the world so much as before " the God of 
heaven " ; going quietly home to realise his sin, and 
to conquer it, and only in the humility of his soul 
to " wonder " at the strength with which his evil 
habit has been killed. 

Soon after this event, Bunyan's time of trial 
began. A godly neighbour led him to study the 
Bible, and the Puritan's habit of taking isolated 
texts, and attaching great importance to their 
significance without studying them in connection 
with the context and the Bible as a whole, 
proved the source of terrible religious difficulties 
in Bunyan's case. 

A godly Baptist minister named Gifford had a 
congregation in Bedford, and to it belonged the 
"three or four poor women sitting at a door in 
the sun, and talking about the things of God," 



180 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

upon whom Bunyan chanced one day when in 
Bedford, and whose conversation led him still 
further to a study of spiritual things. 

The next two years were years of darkness to 
him, while he wrestled with his own evil passions, 
and sought for the sense of personal conviction 
necessary for the comfort of those who follow 
the doctrines of Puritanism. " These things," 
he says, " did sink me into very deep despair ; 
for I concluded that such things could not 
possibly be found amongst them that loved God. 
. . . Kick sometimes I did, and also shriek and 
cry ; but yet I was as bound in the wings of 
the temptation, and the wind would carry me 
away. I thought also of Saul, and of the evil 
spirit that did possess him ; and did greatly fear 
that my condition was the same with that of his." 
His struggle was a hard one ; even the healing 
emotion of tears was denied to him. " If I would 
have given a thousand pounds for a tear, I could 
not shed one." And the feeling, most terrible of 
all to bear, that of isolation, constantly oppressed 
his soul. u I saw some could mourn and lament 
their sin ; and others again could rejoice and 
bless God for Christ ; and others again could 
quietly talk of and with gladness remember the 
Word of God ; while I only was in the storm and 



BUNYAN 181 

tempest." But light came to him at last ; even 
before the two years were over he had occasional 
gleams of comfort. " I remember," he says, 
"that one day as I was travelling into the coun- 
try, and musing on the wickedness ... of my 
heart, and considering of the enmity that was in 
me to God, that Scripture came into my mind, 
' He hath made peace by the blood of His 
cross.' By which I was made to see, both again 
and again and again that day, that God and my soul 
were friends by this blood. . . . This was a good 
day to me ; I hope I shall not forget it." 

At last came the time when the struggle ceased, 
and the fight, so earnestly and conscientiously 
waged for more than two weary years, was over. 
The words darted suddenly into his mind, " My 
grace ts sufficient for thee; " again and again they 
came to him, seeming to be written in letters of 
fire before his troubled eyes. Like his own 
pilgrim, Christian, he cast his burden down be- 
fore the Cross ; he grasped the power of the 
Gospel beyond that of the Law, and from the 
Slough of Despond he passed through the Wicket 
Gate, and prepared himself with gladness to tread 
the narrow way that leads to the city of God. 

Bunyan's joy in his deliverance was as great as 
had been his fears in his earlier state. " One 



1 82 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

night," he says, " as I was sitting by the fire, I 
suddenly felt this word to sound in my heart, * I 
must go to Jesus.' At this my former darkness 
and atheism fled away, and the blessed things of 
heaven were set within my view. While I was 
on this sudden thus overtaken with surprise, 
' Wife,' said I, ' is there ever such a Scripture, I must go 
to Jesus ? ' She said she could not tell ; therefore 
I sat musing still to see if I could remember such 
a place. I had not sat above two or three 
minutes, but that came bolting in upon me, l And 
to an innumerable company of angels ; ' and withal 
Hebrews the twelfth, about the Mount Sion, was 
set before mine eyes." 

His struggle had been at first a lonely one ; he 
had seemed removed by it from human fellow- 
ship. Now at last he found comfort in the 
thought of being one of a ransomed host — not a 
wretched lost soul striving in darkness, with none 
to help, but one of the " general assembly and Church 
of the firstborn which are written in heaven." " Then 
with joy," he says, " I told my wife, ' Oh, now, I 
know, I know ! ' And," he adds, " but that night 
was a good night to me ; I never had but few 
better." 

After this change in his spiritual condition, 
Bunyan became a member of Gifford's Baptist 



BUNYAN 183 

congregation at Bedford, and was soon set apart, 
" by prayer and fasting," as a preacher in the town 
and neighbourhood. 

His gift of homely, expressive language, his 
clear insight into the unseen world, his incessant 
study of the Bible, from which both his phrases 
and his imagery were largely drawn, and the firm 
foundation on which his own faith rested, must 
have made him a welcome guide to many in that 
time of religious doubt and difficulty. 

Preaching such as his was illegal, but the law 
at that time dealt leniently with offenders, and 
Bunyan continued to preach until six months after 
the Restoration, when he was imprisoned for his 
refusal to discontinue the practice, and so spent 
the next twelve years of his life in Bedford Gaol. 

His treatment there varied according to the 
feeling of the time ; sometimes he was closely 
confined, at others he was allowed to visit his wife 
and children ; he earned something by making 
" long-tagged laces," which he sold to travelling 
hawkers, and he preached regularly to his fellow 
"spirits in prison." Now, too, he began to write 
regularly, although before this time he had 
published several religious tracts ; in 1666, the 
year of the great fire of London, when he had 
been already six years in prison, he published the 



1 84 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

story of his own spiritual life in u Grace Abound- 
ing," and four years later he began to write "The 
Pilgrim's Progress," which, however, was not pub- 
lished for eight years more. In 1682 he published 
his other famous allegory, u The Holy War," and in 
1684 * ne second part of "The Pilgrim's Progress." 

In 1672, when the laws against all noncon- 
formists were relaxed, he was released from prison, 
and on May 9th, of the same year, he was granted 
a licence to preach. 

He was now well known, both as a writer and a 
preacher, and men flocked to hear him from all 
parts. A large chapel was built for him in 
Bedford, and he still travelled about the neigh- 
bourhood in his old fashion, only that now he 
sometimes came as far as London, where he 
preached to crowded congregations. 

So passed the rest of his life, in the busy sober 
discharge of his duties, the showing forth to others 
in every way the joy of salvation which was his 
own most cherished possession. And in the path 
of duty death came to him. In 1688 he rode 
through a severe storm from London to Reading, 
to use his influence in reconciling a father and son ; 
he succeeded in his mission, but caught so severe 
a chill that it brought on fever, and he died on 
August 31st, aged sixty years. 



BUNYAN 185 

To the end of his life he was the same simple 
honest God-fearing peasant soul that he had been 
at the time of his conversion. 

A contemporary describes him " as mild and 
affable in conversation, not given to loquacity or 
much discourse in company unless some urgent 
occasion required it, observing never to boast of 
himself or of his parts, but rather seem low in his 
own eyes, and submit himself to the judgment of 
others . . . being just in all that lay in his 
power to his word ; not seeming to revenge 
injuries ; loving to reconcile differences and to 
make friendship with all." 

In appearance he was tall and strong, with 
ruddy face, reddish hair, and sparkling eyes, that 
must have glowed indeed with hardly earthly 
light at the visions they beheld. His Pilgrim's 
experiences were his own, and the glorious end 
was the goal to which he struggled ; so both in 
" Grace Abounding " and in *' The Pilgrim's Pro- 
gress " we have the history of his own life. From the 
Slough of Despond he passed through the Wicket 
Gate into the narrow way, he climbed the Hill of 
Difficulty, and wrestled with Apollyon in the Valley 
of the Shadow of Death. With Hopeful ever by his 
side he reached the banks of the river that has no 
bridge, and went out upon it into the darkness 



1 86 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

beyond our ken, in the sure faith that "the 
gates of the city would be opened to let " 
him in. 

To write on " The Pilgrim's Progress " is much 
like writing upon the Bible. To most of us it is 
bound up with the earliest memories of our child- 
hood, with our first thoughts of right and wrong, 
our first ideas of God and heaven. 

The story is simple enough, but it is always new, 
for it deals with the simplest of all themes, and yet 
one which is repeated day by day a thousand 
times ; it tells of the passage of a human soul 
from the cradle to the grave, and it tells the tale in 
language borrowed from the Bible, and yet with 
quaint homely touches from the author's own 
experience, which make the characters speak to us 
as living men and women. 

Christian, the hero of the story, reads in the 
Book of the wrath which will come upon the City 
of Destruction, and he makes up his mind to leave 
his home and to undertake the dangerous and 
toilsome journey which will lead him to the 
Celestial City. He cannot persuade his wife or 
children to go with him, so alone — according to 
the Puritan idea of conversion — he starts, being so 
full of fear as to the fate of his native place that he 
runs with his fingers in his ears, lest he should 



BUNYAN 187 

hear the voices of his loved ones trying to retain 
him at their side. 

A heavy burden is on his back, and this adds to 
his difficulty in crossing the Slough of Despond, 
which lies in the middle of the plain outside the 
city. Two neighbours pursue him, Obstinate and 
Pliable, and go with him for a little way, while he 
tells them how Evangelist has taught him the safe 
road to Mount Zion. Obstinate soon leaves him, 
and Pliable's ardour, which is kindled by Christian's 
words, is soon quenched by a tumble into the 
Slough. He scrambles out of it by the way he 
came, and hies him back to the City of Destruction. 
Christian himself had hard work not to sink in the 
mire, for the burden of sin on his back weighed him 
down, but " a man came to him whose name was 
Help, and said, Give me thy hand! So he gave 
him his hand, and he drew him out, and set him 
upon sound ground, and bid him go on his way." 
Then Mr. Worldly Wiseman tries to turn him aside 
to seek ease from his burden in the village of 
Morality, where " dwells a gentleman whose name 
is Legality," quite able to remove the load from 
his shoulders, and should he not be at home his 
son, a " pretty young man whose name is Civility," 
will soon do the work for him. 

The Hill of the Law nearly overwhelms the 



1 88 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

Pilgrim, but he flees from it in time, and again 
meets Evangelist, who turns him back with a 
severe rebuke into the right path. 

So he comes to the Wicket Gate, and Goodwill 
draws him quickly in lest he should be hit by the 
arrows which Captain Beelzebub is constantly 
shooting at pilgrims from his strong castle. 

Goodwill welcomes him with helpful words, and 
speeds him on his journey, telling him that he 
is nearing the place where he will be eased of his 
burden. 

Then he comes to the house of the Interpreter, 
and there he sees many wonderful and terrible 
sights, of which the most awful is the Man in the 
Iron Cage, who has sinned so deeply that his heart 
is hardened and he cannot repent. 

Interpreter gives Christian instructions for his 
journey, and so he goes on between the walls 
which are called Salvation, until u he came at a 
place somewhat ascending ; and upon that place 
stood a Cross, and a little below in the bottom, a 
sepulchre." " So I saw in my dream," says the 
narrative, "that just as Christian came up with the 
Cross, his burden loosed from off his shoulders, 
and fell from off his back, and began to tumble ; 
and so continued to do till it came to the mouth 
of the sepulchre, where it fell in and I saw it no 



BUNYAN 189 

more. Then was Christian glad and lightsome, 
and said with a merry heart, He hath given me rest 
by His sorrow, and life by His death." 

Vivid is the picture of the three men he meets 
with next, Simple, Sloth, and Presumption, sleeping 
by the wayside with fetters upon their heels ; they 
will not be roused by him, even when he warns 
them that a roaring lion will presently pass that 
way. Simple says, / see no danger ; Sloth says, 
Yet a little more sleep ; and Presumption says, Every 
tub must stand upon his own bottom. Unheeded by 
them, Christian goes on until he is startled by two 
men, Formalist and Hypocrisy, who come tumbling 
over the wall into the path at his feet. They 
argue with him that their method of entering the 
narrow way is as good as his, but when they all 
three reach the Hill of Difficulty they show how 
little fitted they are for the difficult journey. One 
takes the path of Danger, and one that of Destruc- 
tion, which lead round the bottom of the hill, 
and they leave Christian alone to climb the 
rugged mountain, often upon his hands and 
knees. 

When this is passed, and also his return journey 
to find his precious roll, which he had dropped 
while sleeping in the arbour on the hillside, he 
comes to the House Beautiful, and is welcomed 



190 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

and entertained by the three godly maidens, 
Prudence, Piety, and Charity. 

They refresh him with food and drink, and he 
stays some days to rest his weary limbs in the 
house which the Lord has built for the refresh- 
ment of travellers. He holds much converse 
with the maidens, and tells them of his doings ; 
and when he finally goes on his way he is equipped 
from their armoury with sword, shield, and helmet, 
also with the " breastplate All Prayer, and shoes 
that would not wear out." 

He has need of all these, for only a little dis- 
tance from the House Beautiful lies the Valley of 
Humiliation, and there he meets with the terrible 
enemy, Apollyon. il Apollyon straddled quite over 
the whole breadth of the way, and said, / am void 
of fear in this matter, prepare thyself to die." 

The fight is long and hard. " No man can 
imagine . . . what yelling and hideous roaring 
Apollyon made all the time of the fight — he spake 
like a dragon ; and on the other side, what sighs 
and groans burst from Christians heart. I never 
saw him all the while give so much as one 
pleasant look, till he perceived he had wounded 
Apollyon with his two-edged sword, then indeed 
he did smile and look upward." 

After this Christian passes down into a still 



BUNYAN 191 

gloomier valley, the Valley of the Shadow of Death. 
There he sees the bones of others who have gone 
before him, and have perished in the darkness ; 
and there evil spirits are around him on all sides, 
tempting him to sin and to destruction. But 
through these dangers too he passes safely, though 
so fearful and " confounded " at times that " he 
did not know his own voice " ; and it is soon after 
leaving this valley that he overtakes the pilgrim, 
Faithful, who had passed him on the journey, while 
he was resting in the House Beautiful. 

Then they went lovingly together, talking of 
all subjects connected with their pilgrimage, and 
cheering one another by godly words. Talkative 
also joined them for a while, but he soon grew 
weary of their discreet conversation, and left them 
just before they again met with Evangelist. 

He warned them now of the trials they were 
approaching in the town of Vanity, where a great 
annual fair was being held. 

The description of the wicked inhabitants of 
this town, and of the evil practices in Vanity Fair, 
and the wise behaviour of the two pilgrims while 
passing through it all describe Bunyan's own 
view of the world ; even the pillory, of which he 
has heard so much, is one of the methods of 
punishment in the town. 



192 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

The pilgrims were seized as enemies to the 
trade of the place, because they would take no 
part in its sinful amusements, and being tried by 
the judge, poor Faithful was condemned to a 
cruel death, and Christian, after being imprisoned, 
with difficulty escaped alive. But with him, in the 
place of his lost friend, came one Hopeful, who 
had taken courage from the sight of Faithful's 
noble end to renounce the ungodly life of the town 
of Vanity, and to join Christian on his way to the 
Celestial City. So together they journey on, pass- 
ing through many perils, of which the most terrible 
is their capture by Giant Despair, and their im- 
prisonment in his gloomy dungeon. They rest, 
and hold sweet converse with the Shepherds who 
feed their flocks on the slopes of the Delectable 
Mountains, and who show them a far-off glimpse 
of the Celestial City. They meet and talk with 
Atheist, and also with the young man Ignorance, 
who joins company with them, but cannot always 
keep up with them, so that presently " they went 
on apace before, and Ignorance he came hobbling 
after." 

So at last the end of the pilgrimage is reached, 
and Christian and Hopeful come together to the 
shores of the dark river which has no bridge, and 
" the river was very deep." 



BUNYAN 193 

Hopeful cheers the sinking Christian when the 
waters seem about to overwhelm him. " Be of 
good cheer, my brother," he says ; " I feel the 
bottom, and it is good." 

Their mortal garments are left in the river ; 
ministering spirits, clad in shining raiment, await 
them on the farther bank, and a great company of 
the heavenly host come forth to greet them, and 

" Lead the toilworn human feet, 
Through the pearl doorway, up the golden street." 

So the progress is over, the battle won, and the 
triumph of the ransomed souls is sung with harp 
and crown and bell. But, after the one glorious 
glimpse of sunlit golden streets, the gates of the 
city close again upon the newly elected, and the 
dreamer is left outside, " which when I had seen, 
I wished myself among them." 

Such is the first part of " The Pilgrim's Pro- 
gress," which few have hesitated to call the finest 
English allegory ever written, and which is also, 
in a certain sense, the first great English novel. 
For with its heavenly meaning, its depth of reli- 
gious thought, and its earnest application of the 
Scriptures, it yet tells an interesting and lively 
tale of adventure and romance, with vivid pictures 
of men and things, and conversations that might 
belong to any period. 

N 



194 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

The second part of " The Pilgrim's Progress " 
was published in 1684, twelve years after Bunyan 
had been pardoned, released from prison, and 
licensed to preach again. It tells of the fate of 
Christiana, Christian's wife, and of their four sons, 
Matthew, Samuel, Joseph, and James, and how 
they too were led, after a time, to follow in their 
father's footsteps, and to leave the City of Destruc- 
tion, and to go forth upon the dangerous journey 
that led to the city on Mount Zion. 

At first they had scoffed at Christian, and had 
joined with the neighbours in trying to prevent 
his departure ; as the " aged gentleman " Mr. 
Sagacity says : " They all play'd the fool at the 
first, and would by no means be persuaded by 
either the tears or the entreaties of Christian, yet 
second thoughts have wrought wonderfully with 
them ; so they have packt up and are also gone 
after him." The neighbours try to keep them, 
as they had tried to keep Christian, and the 
description of the gossiping women who chatter 
together about the departure is one of the 
homely touches that recall Bunyan's life in the 
Bedfordshire village, where such women must 
have been common enough. 

Mrs. Timorous and the young maiden Mercy pay 
Christiana a visit, and Mrs. Timorous sets before her 



BUNYAN 195 

the dangers of her intended journey ; but finding 
she cannot change Christiana's intention, she re- 
turns to her own home, and calls a meeting of her 
gossips, Mrs. Bats-eyes, Mrs. Inconsiderate, Mrs. 
Light-mind, and Mrs. Know-nothing — the choice 
of names is one of Bunyan's greatest gifts, and 
reminds one sometimes of Browning — and they 
discuss the matter together. Finally they settle 
to let her go, in the hope that " better may come 
in her room," for they say that " 'twas never a 
good world since these whimsical fools dwelt 
in it." 

But Mercy stays with Christiana, making up her 
mind " to walk this sunshine morning a little way 
with her to help her on the way." 

So they all set out together, Christiana, Mercy, 
and the four little boys, and though they get 
through the Slough of Despond without much 
difficulty, they are all greatly alarmed, while 
waiting for admission at the Wicket Gate, by the 
fierce barking of a dog. " A dog and a great 
one too, and this made the women and children 
afraid. Nor durst they for a while to knock 
any more, for fear the mastiff should fly upon 
them." 

Therefore they were, as Bunyan expresses it, 
"greatly tumbled up and down in their minds," 



196 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

and knew not what to do. However, they sum- 
mon courage to knock again, and Christiana and 
the boys are admitted, but Mercy is left outside. 
Then she too knocks once more, and, as her 
friend tells her later, the doorkeeper " when he 
heard your lumbring noise, gave a wonderful 
innocent smile," and so Mercy too enters the gate. 
And the keeper told them that the dog is not 
his, but is kept by an enemy in an adjacent castle 
" with intent to keep the pilgrims from coming 
to me. . . . He has frighted many an honest 
pilgrim ... by the great noise of his roaring." 

The keeper of the gate then treats them 
kindly, washes their feet, and gives them food, 
and so sends them forth refreshed upon their 
journey. 

But soon they come to a place where tempting 
fruit-trees hang their laden boughs over the wall 
that bounds the narrow way, and Matthew and 
his brother, in spite of Christiana's chidings, help 
themselves freely to the forbidden fruit, for 
which Matthew afterwards suffers severely. 

Then they come, as Christian had done, to the 
house of the Interpreter, and he shows them the 
wonders and the warnings which his dwelling 
contains, among others " the man that could look 
no way but downwards, with a muck-rake in his 



BUNYAN 197 

hand." And the Interpreter explained to them 
how the man's eyes were so intently fixed on 
earthly things, on "the straws, the small sticks, 
the dust of the floor," that he could not even see 
the heavenly crown which one held, all the time, 
above his head. 

He showed them his garden too, where 
they were surprised to see a little robin 
red-breast, with a great spider in his mouth ; 
but the Interpreter bids them learn from this 
sight how that even good people are not some- 
times above the wish to " change their diet, 
drink iniquity, and swallow down sin like 
water." 

After supper they all rest comfortably in the 
rooms prepared for them, and in the morning 
they prepare to continue their journey. 

But before they go, the damsel Innocent takes 
them to a bath in the garden, there bidding 
them all wash and be clean, for such is her 
master's will ; and when they come to him after 
bathing, " not only sweet and clean, but also 
much enlivened and strengthened in their joints," 
he looks with pleasure upon them, and says to 
them, " Fair as the moon." So are their sins 
washed away. 

Before they leave the house the master calls 



198 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

one of his servants, Mr. Great-heart, and bids him 
arm himself with the weapons which the armoury 
contains, and go with the little party to protect 
them on their way. 

They pass by many of the sights which Christian 
had seen on his pilgrimage, and when they come 
to the place where he had vainly tried to rouse 
from sleep Simple, Sloth, and Presumption, they 
see the bodies of these three men hanging dead 
by the wayside. 

They had been punished for their many evil 
deeds, and for the sake of the pilgrims whom 
they had turned aside from the way, such as " Mr. 
Sleepy-head," " Mr. No-heart," " Mr. Short-wind," 
and " a young woman whose name was Dull." 

By the time they reach the arbour on the hill- 
side they were u in a pelting-heat," so they rest 
awhile, and Christiana refreshes her little flock 
with pomegranate, honey-comb, and a "little 
bottle of spirits " which the Interpreter had given 
her. 

When they start again she leaves this precious 
little bottle behind her, and has to send one of 
the boys back to find it ; so Mercy, thinking also 
of Christian's lost roll, calls the arbour a " losing 
place." 

Mr. Great-heart leads them safely through the 



BUNYAN 199 

dangers of the way ; he rights the fierce lion which 
comes forth to meet them, and with blows from 
his good sword forces him to retreat, and so he 
brings them to the porter's lodge of the House 
Beautiful. 

Here they are made so welcome that they are 
in no hurry to depart. Prudence examines each 
of the boys in their religious knowledge, and 
praises the careful teaching of their mother. 
Mercy, who " was of a fair countenance, and there- 
fore the more alluring," consults the ladies of the 
household as to a suitor who " has offered love 
to her," a " man of some breeding, and that pre- 
tended to religion," whose name was Mr. Brisk. 
But they dissuade her from giving him encourage- 
ment, and the party are soon entirely occupied 
with the sufferings of Matthew, who pays dearly 
for his meal of unripe fruit. 

It needs all the care of "Mr. Skill, an antient 
and approved physician," to restore the boy to 
health, and when this is done, Mr. Great-heart 
rejoins them, and they go upon their way. 

Through the Valley of Humiliation they pass, and 
find no evil there, only green grass and pleasant 
pastures, where fair lilies bloom, for the humble- 
minded pass through this valley more easily than 
those who are proud and of a lofty spirit. They 



200 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

saw the monument which told of Christian's vic- 
tory over Apollyon, and then they entered the 
gloom that hung over the Valley of the Shadow 
of Death. Here indeed they were filled with fear, 
for the ground trembled as they walked, and 
horrible noises, like the hissing of serpents, and 
the groaning of dead men, sounded all around 
them. But Mr. Great-heart did not fail them : 
again he fought a lion that lay in their path, he 
comforted them, and sustained their drooping 
spirits, and showed no shrinking from any fear 
or foe. He slew the "great giant Maul, which 
did use to spoil young pilgrims with sophistry," 
and cut off his head from his shoulders with the 
good sword of All-prayer. And so he led them 
in safety through the valley, to the place where a 
good old pilgrim, Honest, was sleeping under 
an oak-tree, and he joined company with their 
party. 

They enlivened their journey with edifying 
tales, until Christiana declared herself and her 
children too weary to travel farther that day, 
and so they stayed at the house of one Gaius, 
much recommended by old Mr. Honest. 

Gaius received them kindly, and hastened to 
order his cook, " whose name was Taste-that-which- 
is-good," to prepare a substantial supper for the 



BUNYAN 201 

tired wayfarers. Here, therefore, they rested for 
a time, and here Matthew, who seemed to have 
aged somewhat rapidly since the episode of the 
unripe fruit, was betrothed and married to Mercy. 

During their sojourn, Mr. Great-heart goes forth 
with Gaius and Honest to the cave where dwells 
the giant Slay-good, who is a " flesh-eater," and 
does " much annoy the King's highway in these 
parts." They fall upon him in his den, where he 
is about to devour a poor pilgrim, Mr. Feeble-mind, 
whom he has taken on his journey, and Mr. Great- 
heart " smote him and slew him, and cut off his 
head, and brought it away to the inn." 

Feeble-mind joins company with them for the 
rest of the journey, and Mr. Ready-to-halt, who 
comes limping up, crutches in hand, at Gaius' 
door, makes a suitable companion for him among 
the party. 

By the wise care of Mr. Great-heart they pass 
safely through the town of Vanity, lodging at the 
house of an old disciple called Mnason, who gives 
two of his daughters in marriage to Samuel and 
Joseph, so that the party which now sets forth 
from the town is considerably augmented. Pre- 
sently they come to Doubting Castle, where dwells 
still Christian's old enemy, Giant Despair. Him too 
Mr. Great-heart slays, and when his wife Diffidence, 



202 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

the giantess, comes up to help him, " old Mr. 
Honest cut her down at one blow." 

And so the pilgrimage is continued, through 
dangers and difficulties, but with the hope of the 
heavenly prize ever before the eyes of the pil- 
grims, " until they were come unto the land of 
Beulah, where the sun shineth night and day." 
Here they rest themselves, secure in the country 
that belongs to their King, where all things 
are for their health, and where none can make 
them afraid. Here they wait upon the banks 
of the river, and see the shining ones who come 
to lead pilgrims to the Holy City, and prepare 
themselves for their turn which must soon 
come. And the mother, Christiana, is the first to 
be called ; " so she came forth and entered the 
river," and " with a beckon of farewell " to 
those upon the bank, she goes to rejoin her 
husband. 

The crippled Ready-to-halt is summoned next, 
" the silver cord is loosed," and " the golden bowl 
is broken" ; he casts away the crutches he will 
need no more, and " the last words he was heard 
to say was Welcome Life. So he went his way." 

And in their turn the pilgrims all go home, to 
that city which Bunyan saw, with his lifelong 
study of the Bible, hardly less vividly than did the 



BUNYAN 203 

saint upon the Isle of Patmos, nearly seventeen 
hundred years before. 

"The Pilgrim's Progress" has brought enjoy- 
ment and instruction to many, but beyond that it 
has probably given consolation and strength more 
than any book except the Bible, to weary pilgrims 
for many generations, who have found the way 
long and the struggle hard, that leads from the 
city of Destruction to that other city "of which 
our God Himself is moon and sun." 

A few words must be said about "The Holy 
War," Bunyan's second allegory, less known, 
but hardly less powerful, than his " Pilgrim's 
Progress." 

It was published in 1682, ten years after his 
release from prison, and between the dates of 
publication of the two parts of "The Pilgrim's 
Progress." 

It resembles less his best known story, than his 
" Life and Death of Mr. Badman," which is the 
biography of a hard and worldly-minded trades- 
man, living in some such provincial town as 
Bedford must have been in Bunyan's day. 

"The Holy War " deals with the scheme of the 
world's redemption, as illustrated in the story of 
the town Mansoul ; its foundation by the Almighty 
Shaddai, its subjection by the evil Prince Diabolus, 



204 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

and its final rescue by Shaddai's son, the Prince 
Emmanuel. The style is the same as in "The 
Pilgrim's Progress," the same mixture of quaint, 
racy phraseology, with beautiful scriptural so- 
lemnity, but in "The Holy War" there is less 
restraint of language, and the Puritan severity 
of rebuke for its enemies comes out more promi- 
nently than in the earlier book. 

The story, like that of the " Pilgrim," is simple 
enough. The town of Mansoul is built by Shaddai 
" for his own delight," " a fair and delicate town," 
in the "gallant country of Mansoul." The town 
had five gates, and "the names of the gates were 
these : Ear-gate, Eye-gate, Mouth-gate, Nose-gate, and 
Feel-gate." Such was the happy state of the town in 
its early days that "there was not a rascal, rogue, 
or traitorous person then within its walls : they 
were all true men, and fast joined together." 

Then comes Diabolus, a mighty giant, and takes 
the town ; and all within it is changed. 

The good and just officers whom the Almighty 
King had placed for the safeguard of the city are 
removed, and evil men are put in their places ; 
sin and misery fill the town, so that it is no more 
like the fair Mansoul of its foundation, but has be- 
come the home of all that is evil. 

The image of Shaddai is broken down, and that 



BUNYAN 205 

of Diabolus set up instead. Lord Will-be-will rules 
the town, and his deputy, Mr. Affection, has his 
name changed to Vile-affection, and he marries so 
bad a wife that their sons are called Impudent 
Black-mouth, and Hate-reproof. "These three 
were black boys. And besides these they had three 
daughters, as Scorn-truth, and Slight-God, and the 
name of the youngest was Revenge. These were 
all married in the town, and also begot and yielded 
many bad brats." 

The inhabitants of Mansoul become more and 
more wretched under the dominion of Diabolus 
and his officers, and at last word is sent to the 
Founder of the city, to ask help in their need ; 
and the Son of God, Emmanuel the Prince, offers 
to come down and save His people from their 
sins. 

So King Shaddai sends forth a mighty army 
to take possession of the city, and first the in- 
habitants are called to hear their Lord's message 
by the trumpeter Take-heed-what-you-hear, who 
stands at the entrance to Ear-gate. 

But the rulers of Mansoul will not listen, they 
have prepared their men, by armour of their own 
devising, to resist the attack, and so the siege 
begins. 

There is constant dissension within the city 



206 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

itself, where good Mr. Conscience, and my Lord 
Understanding, do their best against the wicked 
Diabolonians. In one dispute "they passed from 
words to blows, and now there were knocks on 
both sides. The good old gentleman, Mr. Con- 
science, was knocked down twice, . . . and old 
Mr. Prejudice was kicked and tumbled about in 
the dirt ; . . . and ... he had, by some of the 
Lord Understanding's party, his crown soundly 
cracked to boot. Mr. Anything also, he became 
a brisk man in the broil." 

So the siege continues, until Emmanuel himself 
comes to aid His captains. His power none can 
resist, His soldiers are victorious, He enters Man- 
soul, He " leads captivity captive," and rides 
through the city with Diabolus chained at His 
chariot wheels. 

The Diabolonians within the town who have re- 
sisted Emmanuel's power, much fear His vengeance 
upon them now ; they humbly ask His pardon, 
by Mr. Would-live and Mr. Wet-eyes, and they 
tremble when they hear that they are to be brought 
to trial. But Emmanuel freely forgives all who re- 
pent. He " stripped the prisoners of their mourning 
weeds, and gave them beauty for ashes, the oil of 
joy for mourning, and the garment of praise for 
the spirit of heaviness." A public pardon is pro- 



BUNYAN 207 

claimed for all, and the Prince promises to come 
Himself and dwell within the city. 

From time to time Diabolus makes attempts to 
win back Mansoul, and evil souls in the town try 
to help him. At one time he leads an assault in 
person, and "he called for his drummer, who beat 
up for his men (and while he did beat, Mansoul did 
shake) to be in readiness to give battle to the cor- 
poration. Then Diabolus drew near with his army, 
and thus disposed of his men. Captain Cruel and 
Captain Torment, these he drew up and placed 
against Feel -gate, and commanded them to sit 
down there for the war. And he also appointed 
that, if need were, Captain No -ease should come 
in to their relief. At Nose-gate he placed the 
Captain Brimstone and Captain Sepulchre, and^ bid 
them look well to their ward, on that side of the 
town of Mansoul. But at Eye-gate he placed that 
grim-faced one, the Captain Past-hope, and there 
also now did he set up his terrible standard." 

But well as Diabolus had planned his attack, One 
stronger than he was now within the city, so his 
efforts could prevail nothing. 

Emmanuel's officers, clad in silver armour, fought 
until the Doubters were slain outright, u so the next 
day Mansoul rested, and commanded that the bells 
should be rung." One more fight there is, when old 



208 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

Captain Experience comes forth upon his crutches, 
crying, " Shall I lie here, when my brethren are 
in the fight ! " And the Diabolonians fear when 
they see the spirit of those "who will fight us 
upon their crutches." 

Then the last and fiercest battle is fought, and 
the victory is won by Emmanuel, and " His noble 
Captain Credence," aided by " the stout young Cap- 
tain Self-denial," who behaves himself so valiantly 
in the fight that afterwards " he is made a lord in 
Mansoul!' 

"And now did Mansoul arrive to some good 
degree of peace and quiet," for their foes are slain, 
and their Prince is with them, and He will keep 
them in safety. And the story ends with His 
beautiful and loving address to His people : " O 
my Mansoul, I have lived, I have died. I live, 
and will die no more for thee. I live that thou 
mayest not die. . . . Nothing can hurt thee but 
sin ; nothing can grieve thee but sin ; nothing can 
make thee base before thy foes but sin; take heed 
of sin, my Mansoul. ... As I have, therefore, 
taught thee to watch, to fight, to pray, and to 
make war against thy foes ; so now I command 
thee to believe that my love is constant to thee. 
O my Mansoul, how have I set my heart, my love 
upon thee ! Watch. Behold, I lay no other burden 



BUNYAN 209 

upon thee than what thou hast already. Hold fast, 
till I come." 

Surely such allegories as these need no criticism ; 
they tell their own tale, and teach their own lesson. 
They were written in prison, or in poverty, by a 
homely country tinker, but they have spoken, and 
will speak to every age of men and women in 
England, of that spirit of true Purity which Bunyan 
preached beyond all other Puritans. 



CHAPTER VIII 

JEREMY TAYLOR, BAXTER, AND FOX 

The war between Charles I. and his Parliament was 
essentially a war of religion, and its progress en- 
couraged and stimulated religious thinkers on both 
sides. And when the war itself was over, men con- 
tinued to give their minds to the study of the burn- 
ing theological questions for which many of their 
kindred had given their lives. 

Among such men in the Church of England 
none was more earnest than Jeremy Taylor, and 
no man has left more noble work behind him in 
his books of devotions, which are still used in the 
households of most English Churchmen. Baxter 
was prominent as the leader of the Independents, 
and Fox as the founder of the Society of Friends, 
or Quakers, as they were generally called. 

Jeremy Taylor came from Cromwell's country. 
He was born in 1613 in Cambridge, where his 
father, Nathaniel Taylor, was a barber, and where 
it was easy to give the boy a good education. He 



JEREMY TAYLOR, BAXTER, FOX 211 

was sent to the Perse School when he was six 
years old, and thence, as a sizar, he went to Gon- 
ville and Caius College at the age of thirteen. 
This age was young to enter a college, but Jeremy 
Taylor showed a great aptitude for learning, and 
an unusual docility and sweetness of disposition 
from his earliest days, so that it was said, " Had 
he lived among the ancient pagans, he had been 
ushered into the world with a miracle, and swans 
must have danced and sung at his birth." So 
precocious was he that he was ordained before 
the canonical age of twenty-three ; and in 1634, 
the year after his ordination, he preached for a 
friend several times in St. Paul's Cathedral. Men 
flocked to hear the young scholar from Cambridge, 
who, " by his florid and youthful beauty, and sweet 
and pleasant air, and sublime and raised discourses, 
made his hearers take him for some young angel 
newly descended from the visions of glory." 

It was this " sweet and pleasant air " which was 
Taylor's characteristic throughout his life — the 
charm of a beautiful and innocent soul, filled 
with love to God and man, which breathed in his 
words and illuminated his face as he spoke. 

His was not a nature framed for warfare ; the 
religious controversy of the day did not appeal to 
him : he was reserved, and almost timid. He 



212 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

would have been happiest in a peaceful monastic 
or collegiate life, where he would have had leisure 
for more outpourings of a spiritual nature, such 
as have kept his memory green in the " Holy 
Living and Dying." It seems a strange irony of 
Fate that set him, after a patient endurance of 
the stormy years of Civil War, to end his days and 
break his heart in that constant hotbed of religious 
controversy, the province of Ulster. 

His early promotion came through the notice 
of Laud, who saw in him just such a devout son 
of the Church as she most needed. Laud procured 
for the young divine, though a Cambridge man, a 
fellowship at All Souls' College, Oxford, where 
the Archbishop was Visitor. Jeremy Taylor there- 
fore imbibed the ecclesiastical training of Oxford, 
such as Laud and his party had made it, and 
here he must have spent some happy years, dis- 
cussing questions of theology with kindred spirits 
in college quadrangle and garden, meditating on 
his future writings by the banks of the Cherwell, 
where so many in different ages have pondered 
the same questions. 

His universal popularity continued. At All 
Souls " love and admiration still waited upon 
him," and he was known to all by his " extra- 
ordinary worth and sweetness." 



JEREMY TAYLOR, BAXTER, FOX 213 

Laud watched his young disciple with interest ; 
he made him his private chaplain, and in 1638 he 
gave him the important living of Uppingham. 

The change from the constant " disputations," 
which made up a great part of the academical life 
of Oxford, to the quiet country routine in Rutland- 
shire must have been pleasant enough to Taylor's 
peace-loving nature. 

Here on May 27th, 1639, a little more than a 
year after leaving Oxford, he married Phcebe 
Langsdale, the sister of an old Cambridge friend, 
and by her he had several children. 

He must have made an ideal country parson, 
giving his flock wise counsel and loving guidance, 
and keeping out of his sermons and his instructions 
just that bitter note of controversy which spoiled 
so much of the religious teaching of that time. But 
these peaceful days were of short duration. In 
1 641 came the downfall of Laud; he was im- 
peached and imprisoned, and much of his work 
undone, and the incumbent of Uppingham wrote 
in dismay, " I am robbed of that which once did 
bless me." 

Taylor had been a saintly, loyal follower of 
those heads of the Church in which he believed. 
He had not foreseen the terrible strain to which 
they were putting that Church's authority, and 



2i 4 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

when the crash came he seems to have been 
utterly unprepared. But he did not waver as to 
his conduct. He was Chaplain-in-Ordinary to 
the King at the beginning of the war, he was 
probably with him when the standard was raised 
at Nottingham, and as a Royalist he lived and 
died. 

In February 1645 he was taken prisoner at 
Cardigan Castle, where he was with the Royal 
army which was trying to relieve the place, and 
hence he evidently escaped to the safe shelter 
which was to be his happiest home — Golden 
Grove, the Welsh seat of the second Earl of 
Carbery. His own words describe his feelings 
at the shattering of all those things in which he 
had trusted. 

" In this great storm which hath dashed the 
vessel of the Church all in pieces I have been cast 
upon the coast of Wales, and in a little boat thought 
to have enjoyed that rest and quietness which in 
England in a greater I could not hope for. . . . 
And here again I was exposed to the mercy of the 
sea, and the gentleness of an element that could 
neither distinguish things nor persons. And but 
that He who stilleth the raging of the sea, and the 
noise of His waves, and the madness of His people 
had provided a plank for me, I had been lost to all 



JEREMY TAYLOR, BAXTER, FOX 215 

the opportunities of content or study. But I know 
not whether I have been more preserved by the 
courtesies of my friends or the gentleness or 
mercies of a noble enemy." 

In Lord and Lady Carbery Jeremy Taylor found 
good friends, and at their home in South Wales, 
as their private chaplain, he spent the next eight 
or nine years of his life. 

He had an old Oxford friend, William Wyatt, 
who kept a school in the neighbourhood at 
Newton Hall, in the valley of Carmarthenshire, 
and Taylor assisted him and Dr. Nicholson in 
training the youths, chiefly sons of Royalists, who 
were confided to their care. 

So, between scholastic work and the duties of 
his chaplaincy, his time was well occupied, and he 
now had also leisure for the literary and devotional 
works by which his name is remembered. 

His " Liberty of Prophesying," which was written 
about this time, is an earnest appeal for toleration, 
the one virtue omitted at the time by all forms of 
religion. " In this world," he says, " we believe in 
part and prophesy in part, and this imperfection 
shall never be done away till we be transplanted 
to a more glorious state. Either, then, we must 
throw our chances and get truth by accident or 
predestination, or else we must lie safe in a mutual 



216 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

toleration and private liberty of persuasion, unless 
some other anchor can be thought upon where we 
may fasten our floating vessels and ride safely." 
The idea of such toleration was wholly novel, but 
inculcated with such persuasive force, and impressed 
year by year by the saintly Jeremy Taylor, it began 
to take root in those for whom he wrote. 

As time went on, religious differences ceased 
gradually to be visited with bitter persecution, but 
his had been the first voice — and that, like Moses, 
the voice of a timid man — which had dared to 
make itself heard above the strife of contending 
Christians, to urge " the unreasonableness of pre- 
scribing to other men's faith, and the iniquity of 
persecuting differing opinions." 

The book received much adverse criticism at the 
time. Even the captive King, whom no sufferings 
could bring to a wider range of mental vision, 
severely blamed Taylor's idea of a free conscience, 
and ordered one of his chaplains to remonstrate 
with him on such unorthodox views. 

But no remonstrances troubled for long these 
quiet studious years at Golden Grove ; and Taylor's 
next work was his " Great Exemplar," in which he 
seeks to bring men to lead loving Christlike lives 
by a vivid and glorious narrative of Christ's life on 
earth, without any of the controversial passages 



JEREMY TAYLOR, BAXTER, FOX 217 

which abound in all other religious books of the 
day. " Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil 
the lusts of the flesh " ; this is the idea of the 
work, to live a glorified life by the constant dwel- 
ling on the glory of the earthly days of the Great 
Exemplar. 

His next two works were those by which his name 
is best remembered, his u Rule and Exercises of 
Holy Living " and " Holy Dying." Although they 
contain more minute heart-searchings on certain 
points than would now be deemed quite whole- 
some, yet as books of devotion they have still few 
rivals. His language is simple and beautiful, his 
teaching plain, his ideals lofty, and nowhere are 
there to be found more appropriate prayers 
for special times and persons than in these 
manuals. 

Take one instance, in the tiny prayer " For our 
Children." How could it be improved, though 
pages were added to it ? 

" Bless my children with healthful bodies, with 
good understandings, with the graces and gifts of 
Thy Spirit, with sweet dispositions and holy habits ; 
and sanctify them throughout in their bodies, and 
souls, and spirits, and keep them unblamable to 
the coming of the Lord Jesus. Amen." 

Specially beautiful too is his " Prayer for holy 



2i 8 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

intention in the beginning and pursuit of any 
considerable action, as study, preaching," &c., though 
it is too long to quote in full. " Let no pride," he 
says, " or self-seeking, no covetousness or revenge, 
no impure mixture or unhandsome purposes, no 
little ends and low imaginations pollute my spirit 
and unhallow any of my words and actions ; but 
let my body be a servant of my spirit, and both 
body and spirit servants of Jesus." 

In the fourth section, " On Humility," we see 
Taylor's own nature revealed perhaps more plainly 
than in any other part of the book, his gentle 
reserve and the lowliness of mind which bordered 
at times on timidity, and which made him pecu- 
liarly ill adapted to cope with the fierce Ulster 
Presbyterians among whom his later days were 
passed. 

" The Holy Dying " is more beautiful in its 
literary form, and more vivid in its intense spiritual 
appreciation of the unseen world, than the earlier 
work. It would be strange if this were otherwise, 
for, between the time of writing the two parts, 
Taylor had twice to mourn the loss of one very 
dear to him. Within a few months died his own 
wife, and the kindly, gracious wife of his patron 
Lord Carbery, whose friendship had been one of 
the greatest comforts of his life at Golden Grove. 



JEREMY TAYLOR, BAXTER, FOX 219 

It is a proof of his power to turn earthly loss to 
gain that, beside those two new-made graves, he 
could write in such a lofty strain as this : — 

** If thou wilt be fearless of death endeavour to 
be in love with the felicities of saints and angels, 
and be once persuaded to believe that there is a 
condition of living better than this ; that there are 
creatures more noble than we ; that above there is a 
country better than ours ; that the inhabitants know 
more and know better, and are in places of rest and 
desire; and first learn to value it, and then learn to 
purchase it, and death cannot be a formidable thing, 
which lets us into so much joy and so much 
felicity." 

The same spirit of lofty resignation and clear 
spiritual insight runs through the whole work, 
which contains passages fitted to comfort and sus- 
tain the passing soul at each stage of its journey, 
and many beautiful prayers to be used privately, 
or by the minister, at the visitation of the sick. 

This is Jeremy Taylor's best known work, and 
in it he rises to his highest level of spiritual 
exaltation. 

But the end of these quiet years at Golden Grove 
was drawing near, and the time approaching which 
would see Taylor back again in the strain and stress 
of the active world, for which his peaceful retire- 
ment had ill-fitted him. 



220 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

He published several other religious works before 
leaving his Welsh home, among others two volumes 
of " Sermons " and a number of hymns; the hymns 
have not much beyond his name to recommend 
them, but the sermons contain some of his best 
work. 

And so, after these restful years in the beautiful 
Welsh scenery, Jeremy Taylor went back into the 
life of London, where he found things very differ- 
ent from what he had once known them. Strafford, 
whom he had admired, and Laud, whom he had 
reverenced and loved, lay each in a traitor's grave, 
the King himself slept in St. George's Chapel, and 
England was ruled by the iron hand of Oliver 
Cromwell. 

The Church, as Taylor knew it, had but little 
open existence. There was only one pulpit in 
London, that of St. Gregory's, near St. Paul's, 
where Anglican preachers were tolerated ; and 
it was while filling this pulpit that Taylor became 
known to John Evelyn, the writer of the famous 
u Diary." 

Evelyn was a warm admirer of the great 
preacher, and a good friend to him at a time 
when friends were badly needed ; for Taylor's 
writings were so entirely out of keeping with the 
taste of those in authority that they gained him 



JEREMY TAYLOR, BAXTER, FOX 221 

great unpopularity, and constant adverse criticism. 
He was very poor, too ; and though his second 
wife, Joanna Bridges, whom he married about 
this time, had private means, he still seemed to 
feel the pinch of poverty so heavily that he was 
thankful to accept private help from Evelyn and a 
few other wealthy Royalists. 

His one secular work, "The Discourse on Friend- 
ship," published in 1657, mav nav e been suggested 
partly by his gratitude to these faithful friends. " I 
will love a worthy friend," he says, " that can delight 
me as well as profit me, rather than him who cannot 
delight me at all, and profit me no more." And 
again : " I choose this man to be my friend, because 
he is able to give me counsel, to restrain my wander- 
ings, to comfort me in my sorrows. He is pleasant 
to me in private and useful in public. He will 
make my joys double, and divide my grief between 
himself and me. . . . Nature joins some to us, and 
religion combines us with others. Society and acci- 
dents, parity of fortune and equal dispositions do 
actuate our friendships ; which of themselves, and 
in their prime disposition, are prepared for all man- 
kind according as any one can receive them." 

Taylor's life was now an anxious one. His 
writings had brought him under the notice of the 
Parliamentary party, and had more than once 



222 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

caused him to be imprisoned, and he occupied 
in London the position of minister to devout 
Churchmen, whom in times of sickness and 
sorrow he frequently had to visit in secret. This 
to a man of his natural timidity must have been 
anxious and nervous work, but he never seemed 
to fail in the performance of his duties. 

It was in 1658, after several refusals, that he at 
last accepted Lord Conway's invitation to become 
assistant lecturer at Lisburn, near Belfast. The 
Anglican Church flourished but feebly among the 
Presbyterians in the north of Ireland, and Lord 
Conway's hope was to strengthen it by bringing 
over to work in its midst the most notable High 
Churchman of the time. Gladly did Lord Conway 
welcome the saintly divine, with his family, and 
give him a home in his own Castle of Portmore, near 
the shores of Lough Neagh. But the task projected 
was beyond Taylor's power — the bitter, rugged 
opposition was to prove too hard for him ; perhaps 
the instrument chosen was of too delicate a make to 
bear the strain of the work. Whatever the reason 
was, the task was left unfinished, and the slender 
thread of Taylor's life was snapped in the struggle. 
He never felt at home in Ulster ; the atmosphere 
of hostility which his views and writings excited 
among the Presbyterian ministers seemed to chill 



JEREMY TAYLOR, BAXTER, FOX 223 

and embitter him, and to draw from him more 
severe censures than he would himself have ap- 
proved in his earlier days. To use a homely 
metaphor, he seemed at this period " to fall be- 
tween two stools." His views were too advanced 
to be tolerated in Ulster, and yet his want of 
success there caused him to be unpopular with 
the authorities in England. Besides this, his 
great book on Conscience, " Ductor Dubitantium," 
gave great offence, and stood in the way of his 
receiving promotion in England. 

Instead of returning to England, according 
to his wish, he was advanced in the Irish 
Church, with the difficulties of which he was 
ill-fitted to cope. Shortly after the Restora- 
tion he was appointed Vice-Chancellor to the 
University of Dublin, this making the third uni- 
versity at which he had been honoured, and was 
nominated to the vacant bishopric of Down and 
Connor. How ill he and the post suited one 
another may be gathered from his report of the 
reception of his overtures to some of the 
Presbyterian clergy in his diocese. 

"They threaten to murder me," he writes. 
"They use all the arts they can to disgrace me, 
and to take the people's hearts from me, and to 
make my life uncomfortable and useless to the 



224 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

service of his Majesty and the Church. ... It 
were better for me to be a poor curate in a 
village church than a bishop over such intoler- 
able persons, and I will petition your Excellence 
to give me some parsonage in Munster, that I may 
end my days in peace, rather than abide here, 
unless I may be enabled with comfort to contest 
against such violent persons. . . . My charge hath 
in it more trouble than all the dioceses in his 
Majesty's dominions put together." 

A sad report of his charge to come from the 
pen of a Bishop, but one hardly to be wondered 
at by those who understand both Jeremy Taylor 
and the Presbyterianism of Ulster. The two were 
too far apart to have any meeting ground. No 
doubt, in his fervent High Churchmanship, he 
was quite as " intolerable a person " to them as 
they to him, though he may have been less 
» violent." 

He begged constantly to be removed to a 
more congenial sphere, but he begged in vain. 
" Accordingly," as Mr. Gosse says, " he took what 
heart he could, but he had no peace or happiness 
all the time that he was bishop in Down ; and 
there can be no question that the constant fric- 
tion with his Presbyterian neighbours, and those 
1 insufferable discouragements ' of which he never 



JEREMY TAYLOR, BAXTER, FOX 225 

ceased to complain, paralysed his usefulness and 
shortened his life." 

His most congenial work was in Dublin, where 
he preached on special occasions, and where he 
had many friends and admirers. He rebuilt the 
cathedral of Dromore, which see is now merged, as 
of old, in that of Down and Connor ; and he built 
the little church near Moira in County Antrim, 
which has lately been restored and reconsecrated. 
He continued his religious writings, and he gave 
frequent addresses to his clergy, urging them to 
gentle kindly dealings with their congregations, 
and to a strict adherence to the ritual of the 
Anglican Church. 

Private grief hastened his end. He had only 
one son now living, who fell ill of consumption, 
and died in London in July 1667, and this blow 
seemed to take from the bishop what energy he 
had left. He had no strength to battle with the 
fever which he caught while visiting a sick man 
in Lisburn ; his earthly hopes had faded, his 
children were dead, and he was far from the 
English friends for whose companionship his 
faithful loving nature had never ceased to yearn. 
His work lay in a field of controversy such as 
had ever been most distasteful to him, and which 
tended to embitter his kindly soul ; so, for the 



226 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

ten days that he lay fever-stricken on his bed, his 
thoughts, doubtless, were chiefly those of solemn 
joy at the exchange of his earthly ministry for the 
rest beyond the grave. His life had been one 
long preparation for a "holy dying," and in quiet 
confidence he waited for release. 

His earlier words may have been in his mind 
at the end : " We must carry up our affections 
to the mansions prepared for us above, where 
eternity is the measure, felicity is the state, angels 
are the company, the Lamb is the light, and God 
is the portion and inheritance." 

So the pure bright spirit of Jeremy Taylor 
passed away, and he was buried in the little 
cathedral at Dromore, which he had built, and 
where he had asked to be laid ; and so at last 
he had the rest for which he had vainly craved 
on earth. 

His lifelong friend Bishop Rust thus speaks 
of him : " He is fixed in an orb of glory, and 
shines among his brethren-stars, that in their 
several ages gave light to the world and turned 
many souls unto righteousness, and we that are 
left behind, though we can never reach his per- 
fections, must study to imitate his virtues, that 
we may at last come to sit at his feet in the 
mansions of glory." 



JEREMY TAYLOR, BAXTER, FOX 227 

Two other religious teachers of those stormy 
times who maintained their beliefs, though differ- 
ing widely in doctrine from Jeremy Taylor's with 
his steady consistency, were the great Presby- 
terian leader Richard Baxter, and George Fox, 
the founder of the Society of Friends. 

Fox, like Bunyan, was full of religious thoughts 
and fancies even as a child. His father was a 
weaver at Fenny Drayton, in Leicestershire, and 
so devout a man that his neighbours called him 
" Righteous Christie." 

George Fox was born in 1624 and died in 
1 69 1, the same year as Baxter, who was born in 
1 61 5, two years later than Jeremy Taylor. When 
about twenty Fox felt himself called to live apart 
from his fellows, and to ponder on religious sub- 
jects until his own convictions became clear. 

When much troubled by doubts and difficulties 
he sought aid from various clergymen in the 
neighbourhood, but his choice in the matter of 
spiritual advisers seems to have been unfortunate. 
One cheery parson advised him to settle his doubts 
by the help of tobacco and psalm-singing ; and 
another, who interviewed him in the rectory 
garden, was so angry with Fox for stepping on 
some of his cherished flower-beds, that he broke 
off the discussion and retired in a violent passion. 



228 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

However, without external aid he wrestled with 
his difficulties, and conquered them, so that he 
gradually formulated a set of religious rules by 
which he and his followers were guided. 

Their first tenet of faith was that religion was 
an affair only between God and the individual 
soul, so that no forms, no ceremonies, no liturgy, 
and no ministry were needed. At their meetings 
all sat in silence, until the Spirit moved any among 
them to speak before the Lord. One great reason 
for their persecution by others was the absence of 
any ceremony in their marriages, which, accord- 
ing to their enemies, rendered Quaker marriages 
invalid. They also maintained the strict equality 
of persons, and declined to use any terms of 
respect or reverence. Their dress was of the 
plainest — sober dove-coloured dresses, with white 
kerchiefs, for the women ; and for the men, plain 
leather garments and high felt hats. 

In his own narrative Fox writes : " Moreover, 
when the Lord sent me into the world, He forbad 
me to put off my hat to any, high or low ; and I 
was required to thee and thou all men and women, 
without any respect to rich or poor, great or 
small. And as I travelled up and down I was 
not to bid good-morrow or good-evening, neither 
might I bow or scrape with my leg to any one ; 



JEREMY TAYLOR, BAXTER, FOX 229 

this made the sects and professions rage." This 
is hardly to be wondered at, especially in an age 
which set far more store than the present by 
marks of deference and respect. So unpopular 
were these innovations in manners that Fox goes 
on to describe the " great rage, blows, punchings, 
beatings, and imprisonments " with which they 
were received. The denouncing of sin, in what- 
ever form he beheld it, was another of Fox's tenets, 
and one which often led him into difficulties. " I 
was sorely exercised," he writes, " in going to the 
courts, to cry for justice, in speaking and writing 
to judges and justices to do justly ; in warning 
such as kept public houses of entertainment that 
they should not let people have more drink than 
would do them good ; in testifying against wakes, 
feasts, May-games, sports, plays, and shows, which 
trained people up to vanity and looseness, and led 
them from the fear of God, and the days set forth 
for holy-days were usually times wherein they 
most dishonoured God by these things." This, 
of course, is an allusion to Laud's " Book of 
Sports," revived from James I.'s proclamation 
in 161 8, which enjoined Sunday games outside 
the hours of divine service. 

But such was Fox's earnestness, and his power 
of impressing men with his own beliefs, that his 



230 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

followers grew continually in numbers in spite of 
the hard usage their conduct often brought upon 
them. He and other Quaker preachers bowed to 
no authority. When imprisoned for illegal preach- 
ing they declined to give any promises as to 
abstaining from the same in future, and the con- 
sequence was that Fox himself endured many 
terms of imprisonment, during some of which he 
was severely handled. He travelled about the 
country, through Cornwall and Somersetshire, to 
Scotland, and afterwards to the West Indies and 
to America, to visit and strengthen in their faith 
the believers in his form of religion. From Crom- 
well he received kindly words more than once ; 
for earnestness and simplicity, both of which Fox 
possessed, were two sure passports to the favour 
of the Protector. It was shortly before Crom- 
well's death that they met for the last time. Fox 
was anxious to get some promise of toleration for 
the Quakers, so that they might be allowed to 
hold their meetings without being dispersed by 
the police ; and he went down to Hampton 
Court, where the Protector was staying, and had 
an interview with him there. He thus describes 
the scene : " I met him riding in the Park, and 
before I came to him, as he rode at the head of 
his life-guard, I saw and felt a waft (or apparition) 



JEREMY TAYLOR, BAXTER, FOX 231 

of death go forth against him ; and when I came 
to him he looked like a dead man. After I had 
laid the sufferings of Friends before him, and had 
warned him according as I was moved to speak 
to him, he bid me come to his house. So I 
returned to Kingston, and the next day went up 
to Hampton Court to speak further with him. 
But when I came he was sick, and one Harvey, 
who waited on him, told me the doctors were 
not willing I should speak to him. So I passed 
away, and never saw him more." 

This is one of many instances when Fox 
claimed to be gifted with prophetic foresight, for 
at this time the " waft of death " was very near 
the great Protector. Fox's wife, Margaret Fell, 
whom he married according to the Quaker custom 
by solemnly taking her to be his wife in the pre- 
sence of a number of Friends, was also a preacher. 
She was older than her husband by fifteen years, 
and was fifty-four at the time of their marriage. 

In spite of persecution the Quakers grew and 
multiplied. During the reign of Charles II. they 
had to endure many hardships and imprisonments, 
and it was not till the beginning of James II.'s 
reign that they were granted freedom of worship in 
England. James, being a Roman Catholic, sought 
to benefit those of his own faith, and he could 



232 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

only do so by a Declaration of Indulgence, 
which included alike Nonconformists and Roman 
Catholics ; and this declaration released from 
prison over a thousand Quakers. Fox did not live 
many years . after its publication; he died at the 
age of sixty-six, on November 13th, 1690: as 
his friend William Penn writes, " In a heavenly 
frame of mind ... he quietly departed this life in 
peace." 

In appearance he is described as large and stout, 
with placid face, and keen grey eyes ; grave and 
courteous in manners and conversation, a simple 
forcible speaker, of little education, but honest and 
benevolent, and according to the chief article of 
faith in the peace-loving Quakers, u civil beyond 
the common forms." 

A very different man was the Presbyterian 
minister Richard Baxter, who, until the "Act of 
Uniformity" in 1662, worked with honour and 
success in the parish church of Kidderminster. 
Then, together with hundreds of other godly and 
hardworking parsons, he had to leave his cure, and 
support himself by writing, and any other means 
he could devise. 

He was a most industrious writer of religious 
books, but he hardly gave enough thought or care 
to the preparation of each, so that few of his 



JEREMY TAYLOR, BAXTER, FOX 233 

works are really good specimens of the literature 
of the time. His book on "The Saints' Ever- 
lasting Rest " is the best known, and probably the 
most studied of his works ; but, of the hundred and 
sixty-eight volumes which he published at different 
times, his wife's opinion may have been correct 
that he " had done better to have written fewer 
books, and to have done those few better." In 
the beginning of his tl Apology for the Noncon- 
formist Ministry," he puts a note to this effect : 
" Reader, I have not time to gather the errata of 
the Press," which is characteristic of his haste in 
writing. But in character he was a noble and 
consistent example of a Nonconformist of his 
day. Strictly speaking he belonged to no party, 
being moderate in his views, charitable to others, 
and anxious to heal differences rather than to 
make them more pronounced. 

He laboured during a long life, by preaching and 
by writing, to bring greater charity into the un- 
charitable Christianity of the time ; and though 
racked by constant suffering from an incurable 
disease, and often in prison, and in dire poverty, he 
never gave up his task of urging the right of free 
worship for all men. He had a noble helper in 
his wife, Margaret Charlton, who had left a 
comfortable home in a higher rank than his for a 



234 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

love which lasted her lifetime. She was twenty 
years his junior, fair and gentle, and with all that 
could please a maiden of high degree ready to her 
hand ; but she forsook all to become the wife of 
the elderly, delicate, and unpopular minister, and 
to pour upon his hard life such a wealth of love 
and care as blesses the lot of few upon earth. 
She gave her money gladly to keep him from 
dependence on others ; when he was imprisoned 
she followed him cheerfully to the common gaol ; 
she was his loving companion through many evil 
days, until the strain proved too much for her 
delicate nature, and the constant sight of his 
sufferings wore out her strength. Her mind, 
Baxter writes, was " like the treble strings of a 
lute, strained up to the highest, sweet, but in 
continual danger." While she lived her loving 
devotion softened all trials for him, and she had 
her reward in the faithful love and trust of her 
great husband. 

" Dear heart," he wrote to her, not long before 
her death, " the time of our mutual help is short ; 
oh let us use it accordingly. But the time of our 
reaping the fruit of this and all holy endeavours 
and preparatory mercies will be endless. . . . The 
Lord forgive my great unprofitableness, and the 
sin that brought me under any disabilities to 



JEREMY TAYLOR, BAXTER, FOX 235 

answer your earnest and honest desire of greater 
help than I afford you, and help me yet to amend 
it towards you. But though my soul be faulty 
and dull, and my strength of nature fail, be sure 
that He will be a thousand-fold better to thee, even 
here, than such crooked, feeble, useless things as is 
thy R. B." 

This faithful wife was taken from him in the 
year 1681, and the last nine years of his life were 
unlighted by the soft glow of her devotion. 

He might have had worldly advancement had he 
been willing to sacrifice his convictions ; but, just 
as he refused compliance in 1662 with the "Act of 
Uniformity," which compelled all ministers to use 
and subscribe to the prayer-book, and to be or- 
dained by a bishop, so when five-and-twenty years 
later James II. sought to aid the Roman Catholics 
by publishing the " Act of Indulgence " for them and 
Protestant Nonconformists alike, Baxter refused 
to join with the Roman Catholics in a position 
which would have weakened the English Church. 

He stood alone throughout his life, a brave 
patient champion of moderate worship, unable 
because of the constant changes in high places to 
do all of which he was capable, but never relaxing 
his efforts, until death claimed him after a hard life 
of seventy-five years. 



236 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

He had been severe in his writings, especially in 
his later days, towards his opponents, but of this 
he repented before his death. " Every sour or 
cross provoking word which I gave them maketh 
me almost unreconcilable with myself, and tells 
me how repentance brought some of old to pray 
to the dead whom they had wronged, to forgive 
them in the hurry of their passion." Of his keen 
language in controversy he writes : " I repent of 
it, and wish all over-sharp passages were expunged 
from my writings, and ask forgiveness of God 
and man." 

His happiest years had been spent as incumbent 
of the parish church of Kidderminster, and it is 
right that his statue should now stand there, 
outside the churchyard, at the head of the long 
steep street up which he climbed so often to 
preach the word of God. 



CHAPTER IX 

GEORGE HERBERT, AND LORD FALKLAND 

There were no years in the history of England 
which produced so great a number of religious 
thinkers as the troubled times between the reigns 
of James I. and James II. 

In Laud we have the great Archbishop of the 
Anglican Church : in Bunyan, one whose spiritual 
insight lifted him above all forms and ceremonies 
into the pure heavenly atmosphere of his own 
Delectable Mountains: in Juxon and Jeremy Taylor 
we have an English and an Irish Bishop, each 
struggling honestly with the difficulties that beset his 
position : Fox represents the enthusiastic founder 
of a new sect, seeking after righteousness, and 
Baxter the wise and noble leader of the moderate 
Presbyterians. But the picture of the clergy of the 
day would be incomplete without one more figure, 
that of the ideal country parson, as he would love 
to be remembered, the " holy George Herbert." 

There was nothing in the circumstances of his 
birth to foreshadow what his life would be. He 



238 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

was the son of noble parents, Sir Richard and Lady 
Herbert, and was born on the 3rd of April 1593, 
in Montgomery Castle, Shropshire. 

He had three sisters and six brothers, of whom 
the eldest was Lord Herbert of Cherbury, and 
George himself was the fifth son. His father died 
when he was only four years old, but his wise and 
gracious mother did all in her power to supply the 
place of both parents to her children ; and there 
seemed a special bond of sympathy and affection 
between her and the little son George, who spent 
his childhood " in sweet content," according to 
Izaak Walton, u under the eye and care of his 
prudent mother." 

He, and two of his brothers, learned with the 
family chaplain in their early days, according to 
the fashion of the time in noble households, and 
when he was twelve years old he was sent to 
Westminster School. There his unusual charm of 
nature and disposition was at once perceived, and 
" the beauties of his pretty behaviour and wit 
shined and became so eminent and lovely in this 
his innocent age that he seemed to be marked out 
for piety, and to become the care of heaven and of 
a particular good angel to guard and guide him." 

This " care of heaven " never left him, from the 
days of his blameless boyhood through the tempta- 




George Herbert. 

From an engrai'ing in the original edition of " The Temple.' 



GEORGE HERBERT 239 

tions of his college career, and to the end of his 
short earthly life he seemed surrounded by a pure 
atmosphere of heavenly radiance which no worldly 
sin could dim, and which attracted all men to him 
by its beauty. 

As a king's scholar from Westminster, he went 
up to Trinity College, Cambridge, and passed 
through the academical curriculum with unusual 
speed, owing to his ability and diligence, and he 
was elected when only twenty-six Public Orator to 
the University. 

George Herbert's mother had always wished 
that her gifted son should take Holy Orders, but 
for a time his mind rather inclined him to the life 
of a courtier. His learning was much appre- 
ciated by the scholarly if pedantic James I., and 
Herbert's youthful days saw him clad in all the 
bravery of velvet coat, silk stockings, and gilded 
sword, a partaker of the gay and busy life of 
London. 

But he did not long debate as to his future 
career ; with the death of King James he seemed 
to make up his mind to quit the life of the world 
and to give himself to the work of the ministry. 

He had one enemy alone, against whom he 
fought bravely, but who put ever growing obstacles 
in his path of usefulness, and this was the terrible 



240 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

foe consumption. Perhaps the bright serenity of 
his character owed something to the form his 
weakness took, for there is a certain sweet liveli- 
ness which seems to be granted specially to those 
stricken with consumption, and which seems only 
to grow brighter as they lose their bodily strength. 

But by giving himself a rest and holiday in the 
house of his friend Lord Danvers, Herbert grew 
so much stronger for a time that he resolved upon 
two important steps, one that of taking Holy 
Orders, and the other that of marriage. 

There is something hardly ordinary in his me- 
thod of wedding. He had a friend, Mr. Danvers, 
brother of Lord Danvers, with whom he stayed 
often, and " who loved Mr. Herbert so very much 
that he allowed him such an apartment as might 
best suit with his accommodation and liking." 
This Mr. Danvers was the father of nine daughters, 
for one of whom he desired George Herbert as a 
husband. He openly discussed the matter, both 
with his friends and with the young ladies them- 
selves, desiring most of all that he should marry 
Jane, " because Jane was his beloved daughter." 

It was somewhat sad that, when the marriage 
did take place, neither the father of the bride nor 
the mother of the bridegroom were alive to witness 
the fulfilment of their hopes. 



GEORGE HERBERT 241 

Jane Danvers and George Herbert had been told 
much about one another, and yet, unlike what 
usually happens in such cases, they fell in love at 
once when they met. So strong was their mutual 
attraction that, according to Izaak Walton, the 
lady " changed her name into Herbert the third 
day after this first interview." They lived in 
great comfort and happiness together ; she under- 
stood her husband's nature, and shared his kindly 
deeds towards all the poor who came under his 
influence, and so blessed was their home life — 
although no children came to gladden it — " that," 
Walton says, " there never was any opposition 
betwixt them unless it were a contest which should 
most incline to a compliance with the other's 
desires." 

It was soon after his marriage that the king 
presented Herbert to the living of Bemerton, near 
Salisbury, and there the rest of his life was spent. 

He had been before prebendary of Layton 
Ecclesia, in the diocese of Lincoln, where he had 
restored the ruinous little church to a state of 
great beauty. His mother, who was alive at the 
time of his going there, had endeavoured to dissuade 
him from such a work by the somewhat severe 
maternal warning, u George, it is not for your weak 
body and empty purse to build churches." 

Q 



242 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

His three years' ministry at Bemerton was like a 
beautiful spring day, so fair, so fresh, with such 
harmonies of sight and sound everywhere, and, 
alas ! so short. 

He was one of the most loving sons the 
Church of England ever had. He appreciated 
the beauty and the significance of every part 
of every service, and he spent his life in teaching 
such appreciation to the people among whom 
he lived. 

His collection of poems, " The Temple," breathes 
this loving appreciation in every line, and its spirit 
dominated his whole life. 

At his induction to Bemerton, when, according 
to the custom of the time, he was shut alone into 
the church to toll the bell, he did not reappear 
at the usual time. His friend, Mr. Woodnot, a 
wealthy and religious Londoner, peeped in at 
one of the church windows, and there saw him 
prostrate before the altar, offering up his future 
life to God's service, and making rules for his 
own conduct in the ministry upon which he was 
entering. 

Humility was one of the virtues which he 
deemed specially befitting both a parson and his 
wife. When he had been made Rector of Bemer- 
ton, and had put off his sword and silk clothes for 



GEORGE HERBERT 243 

the canonical coat — made by the Salisbury tailor, 
according to Walton, in two days — he bade his 
wife to take heed to her future behaviour. 

" You are now," he said, " a minister's wife, 
and must now so far forget your father's house as 
not to claim a precedence of any of your parish- 
ioners ; for you are to know that a priest's wife 
can challenge no precedence or place but that 
which she purchases by her obliging humility." 
And so entirely did she follow his thought that 
she assured him " it was no vexing news to her, 
and that he should see her observe it with a 
cheerful willingness." 

It was not wonderful that such a couple were 
beloved in their parish ; that the people of all 
classes came gladly to hear him read the service 
and preach on Sunday mornings, and again in 
the afternoons to those catechisings by which he 
set much store as a means of teaching the more 
ignorant among his flock: that at ten and at four 
on every week-day some of the surrounding gentry 
always joined him and his household for the daily 
morning and evening prayer in the little chapel 
beside the rectory, and that even the ploughboy 
in the field would rest a moment from his labour, 
and offer a word of prayer or praise at the sound 
of " holy Mr. Herbert's bell." 



244 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

At that time, when we hear so much about the 
lax lives and ungodly behaviour of the English 
clergy, it is pleasant to think that one of the 
brightest examples the Church has had of a 
worthy parish priest was spending his life in 
showing forth the beauty of holiness, almost be- 
neath the shadow of Salisbury Cathedral. 

The rules which he had laid down for his own 
conduct he formed into a little book, called " The 
Country Parson." In it he deals with the parson's 
behaviour in every detail of his daily duty, on 
Sundays, praying, preaching, comforting the sick, 
arguing, in his journey, in his mirth, and ending 
with the priestly duty most congenial of all to his 
loving heart : The Parson blessing the people. 

How well he understood the need of a fair 
example in a minister's life is shown in his words 
to his friend, Mr. Woodnot, on the night of his 
induction at Bemerton. When he has enlarged 
to him on the delights of God's service above that 
of the world, he adds : " But above all, I will be 
sure to live well, because the virtuous life of a 
clergyman is the most powerful eloquence to 
persuade all that see it to reverence and love, and 
at least to desire to live like him. And this I will 
do, because I know we live in an age that hath more 
need of good examples than precepts." 



GEORGE HERBERT 245 

He did not engage in controversy ; he did not 
go out into the world to seek for converts or to 
spread his views. Fortunately for him, he died 
before the struggle of the Civil War had darkened 
England, though there is no doubt that all his 
powers would have been devoted, had he lived, 
to the service of Church and king. He was only 
a high-born, cultivated Christian gentleman, who 
gave to all around him the highest form of Church 
teaching, such as few parish priests of his time 
either could or did bestow. 

In his sermons, in his catechisings, and in his 
daily conversation, he taught the hidden meaning 
of every ecclesiastical form, every act of devotion, 
every church ornament or symbol, and the same 
teaching is to be found in his little book of poems, 
"The Temple," the work of his leisure hours at 
Bemerton. He showed his people the helpful- 
ness, as well as the beauty, of the commemorative 
feasts and fasts of the Church year ; the holy joy 
at the birth of the Christ-child, His manifestation 
to all people at the Feast of the Epiphany, the 
quiet sobering Fast during the forty days of Lent, 
ending in the solemn sacrifice of Good Friday ; 
and then the joy of the Resurrection Morning, 
the uplifting of all hearts to follow the risen Lord 
on His Ascension Day, and the ever-fresh promise 



246 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

of His consoling Spirit upon His servants which 
is commemorated on Whitsunday. 

As he taught, so he lived, and so he guided 
those around him to live also. 

In his sober black coat, neat and spotless in his 
personal adornment, he was well known in the 
neighbourhood as a good and cheerful companion, 
often to be met walking into Salisbury to enjoy 
the service at the cathedral. He was tall and 
very thin, with waving hair just resting on his 
shoulders, his features worn and sharpened by 
sufferings of which he never spoke, and with the 
light of heaven shining before time in his clear 
eyes. 

One day he arrived among his friends in Salis- 
bury with his usually spotless suit mud-stained 
and disordered, because on his walk he had found 
a poor man whose horse had fallen beneath a 
heavy load, and had helped him to unload the 
burden, and afterwards to raise the horse and 
reload the cart. 

One of his friends, on seeing his untidy appear- 
ance, told him that " he had disparaged himself 
by so dirty an employment," but he answered 
calmly "that the thought of what he had done 
would prove music to him at midnight." 

Music was his great recreation, and it was to 



GEORGE HERBERT 247 

enjoy this, both at the cathedral and among his 
friends, that he often walked the mile between 
Bemerton and Salisbury. 

But his days were numbered, and soon even 
that mile was beyond his strength ; then he had 
to give up the daily reading of prayers to Mr. 
Bostock — who was his curate at Fulston, to which 
Bemerton was a chapel-of-ease — for his wife saw 
that it was more than his failing strength could 
manage. Unlike most invalids, he acquiesced at 
once in her wish that he should give up the 
reading. " I will not be wilful," he said, " for 
though my spirit be willing, yet I find my flesh 
is weak ; and therefore Mr. Bostock shall be ap- 
pointed to read prayers for me to-morrow ; and 
I will now be only a hearer of them, till this 
mortal shall put on immortality." 

And thenceforward he lay, first on his sofa and 
then on his bed, visited by his friends from far 
and near, tended with loving hands by his wife 
and the three orphan nieces to whom he had 
given a home, and showing in his death, as he 
had done throughout his short life, his perfect 
childlike trust in God. 

Three weeks before the end his dear friend, 
Mr. Woodnot, came to him from London, and did 
not leave him again. 



248 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

On his last Sunday one of those sudden flickers 
of the dying flame seemed to brighten his life's 
light ; he rose from his bed, and took his lute in 
his hand, and playing upon it, he sang a verse of 
one of his own poems : — 

" The Sundays of man's life, 
Threaded together on Time's string, 
Make bracelets to adorn the wife 
Of the eternal glorious King. 
On Sunday heaven's gate stands ope ; 
Blessings are plentiful and rife, 

More plentiful than hope." 

The end was peaceful ; the only distressing 
sound in the quiet room was the weeping of his 
wife and the girls, who felt that they were indeed 
losing a father. He begged them "to withdraw 
into the next room, and there pray every one 
alone for him ; for nothing but their lamentations 
could make his death uncomfortable." So they 
obeyed him, and he was left with his curate and 
his faithful friend. To Mr. Woodnot he then 
delivered his will, begging him to show kindness 
to his wife and nieces ; and then, his last earthly 
duty accomplished, he called on the Lord he loved 
to receive his soul, and so went forth to God. 
As Izaak Walton says : " Thus he lived, and thus 
he died, like a saint, unspotted of the world, full 
of alms-deeds, full of humility, and all the examples 



GEORGE HERBERT 249 

of a virtuous life." And beautiful are the con- 
cluding words of the biographer : " I wish — if God 
shall be so pleased — that I may be so happy as to 
die like him." 

One must know his life to understand his 
poetry, and then the one seems but a part of the 
other. The little book begins with " The Church 
Porch," where he instructs men how to behave 
when they come into God's house, and which 
breathes the true spirit of the Church's teaching: — 

" When once thy foot enters the church, be bare. 
God is more there than thou ; for thou art there 
Only by His permission. Then beware, 
And make thyself all reverence and fear. 

Kneeling ne'er spoiled silk stockings ; quit thy state. 
All equal are within the church's gate. 

Resort to sermons, but to prayers most ; 
Praying's the end of preaching." 

In the last two lines one sees the opposite view 
to that which established the Puritan Lectureships. 

" Judge not the preacher," 

he goes on to say, 

"Do not grudge 
To pick out treasures from an earthen pot. 
The worst speak something good : if all want sense 
God takes a text, and preacheth patience. 

He that gets patience, and the blessing which 
Preachers conclude with, hath not lost his pains." 



250 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

Homely lessons these on Church worship, but 
helpful to far more than George Herbert's village 
congregation. 

Much of his verse has the quaint conceit of the 
day, in phraseology and in form. Easter Wings, 
for instance, is written in the shape of a pair of 
wings, and The Altar in that of an altar ; while in the 
short poem Prayer, probably one of the best known 
in the book, he compares Prayer to all possible 
quaint likenesses, ending with the musical couplet : 

" Church bells beyond the stars heard, the soul's blood, 
The land of spices, something understood." 

One which seems specially to speak of his own 
life, and his spiritual aspirations, is the poem on 
Grace, beginning — 

" My stock lies dead, and no increase 
Doth my dull husbandry improve ; 
O let Thy graces without cease 

Drop from above ! 

Death is still working like a mole, 
And digs my grave at each remove ; 
Let grace work too, and on my soul 
Drop from above." 

And it ends : 

" O come ! for Thou dost know the way. 
Or if to me Thou wilt not move, 
Remove me where I need not say — 
Drop from above." 



GEORGE HERBERT 251 

There are beautiful lines on various of the 
great Feasts — Easter, Trinity, and Whitsuntide ; 
but more beautiful than any of these is his 
poem on Sunday, from which he sang almost 
upon his deathbed. 

Those on Church Music, the Church Floor, and the 
Church Monuments all show his minute study and 
intense love of the Church in which he ministered; 
and his longing for the true bond, to unite all within 
its fold, comes out in the quaint expression : 

" But the sweet cement, which in one sure band 
Ties the whole frame, is Love 
And Charity." 

In the poem on Lent we have the virtue of 
abstinence, or self-denial, put in the most persuasive 
and gentle spirit, in two of the most beautiful 
verses he wrote. The poem begins : 

" Welcome, dear feast of Lent ! who loves not thee, 
He loves not temperance or authority." 

We can almost fancy we see the kindling eyes 
of the poet-parson lighting up the worn face, as 
his failing voice utters the words : 

" 'Tis true we cannot reach Christ's fortieth day ; 
Yet to go part of that religious way 

Is better than to rest : 
We cannot reach our Saviour's purity ; 
Yet are we bid, ' Be holy e'en as He.' 

In both let's do our best. 



252 WITH Mil TON AND THE CAVALIERS 

Who goeth in the way which Christ h.uh gone, 
Is much more sine to moot with Him. th.m ono 

That travelleth b] ways 
Perhaps my God| though He bo far befo:o. 
May nun. Ukd take mo by tho hand, .uul moro, 

May strengthen my decays." 

Truly we can believe that God "took him by 
the hand *" ! 

His love of the Church is expressed in the 
poem, The British and there are many 

more, too numerous to be mentioned separately. 
which illustrate his lifelong love of holiness, and 
his insight into eeiestial joys even while on earth. 

In spite of tailing health, he eould still say : 

"Thou that lust given so much to mo, 
B one thing more — ■ grateful heart 

Not thankful when it pleaseth mo. 
As if Thy blessings had spare days ; 
But such a heart whose pulse may be 
Thy praise.* 

In /\ .\ • we have one of his tew narrative 
poems, and that on Tmu is something in the same 
style ; and in the quaintly beautiful poem Am 
we see his vision of the Priesthood in its most 
perfect form. The whole book is the utterance oi 
a holy man speaking his thoughts aloud ; it is 
essentially the poetry of a churchman written for 



GKORGK HKKBERT 253 

churchman, unlike Bunyan's wide religious utter- 
ances that speak to all forms of Christianity alike. 
George Herbert was a saintly parson of the 
Anglican Church; as such he lived and died, and 
as such he wrote : and of that type we cannot 
have a nobler example. He lived daily in the 
presence of God, and his heart was attuned on 
earth to join the of heaven ; and something 

of that sweet glad radiance he shed around him 
here still seems to touch us as we follow the 
thoughts in his poem on Virtue: 

" Only a sweet and virtuous soul, 
Lib d timber, never gives ; 

Iiut though the whole world turn u> coal, 
'I ben chiefly I 

No one must expect to find in George Herbert 
a great Church reformer or a deep theological 
student ; work such as Bunyan's, Laud's, or 
Milton's was alike beyond his sphere. But as a 
perfect example of a parish priest, at peace with 
God, himself, and his people, he will surely 
appeal to every thoughtful lover of Church 
worship by the sound of " holy Mr. Herbert's 
bell." 

While George Herbert, the country parson, was 
working with the devotion of a lifetime to teach 
the beauty of worship in the English Church, 



254 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

another good man, in a wider field of labour, 
was working to reconcile the doctrines of that 
Church with those which daily threatened to 
overwhelm it. 

Lucius Carey, the second Viscount Falkland, 
has perhaps left behind him a more romantic 
image than that of any other in these troubled 
times. This is due to several causes : his noble 
birth, his wealth, his poetic and intellectual ability, 
the magnetic power he possessed of drawing 
round him all the choicest spirits of the day, and 
which left us so loving and minute a portrait of 
him in the works of his friend Lord Clarendon; 
and, perhaps above all, the fact of his early and 
gallant death upon the field of Newbury, before 
time or circumstances had robbed him of the 
"tender grace" of his youth. He was loved and 
admired by his contemporaries much as Sir Philip 
Sidney was in an earlier day ; and, like the knight 
of Elizabeth's court, his early death left his 
memory ever unalterable. At that time, when 
households were sundered and lifelong friendships 
broken by the terrible questions of the Civil War, 
it was no doubt almost a relief to those who had 
loved Falkland best to know that what he had 
been to them he would always be — 




Lord Falkland. 

From the portrait in the Bodleian Library. 



LORD FALKLAND 255 

" Yet did I love thee to the last, 
As fervently as thou 

Who did'st not change through all the past, 
And can'st not alter now. 
The love where death has set his seal, 
Nor age can chill, nor rival steal, 
Nor falsehood disavow : 
And what were worse, thou can'st not see 
Or wrong, or change, or fault in me." 

Such, in the dark days which followed his death, 
must have been something of the feeling of his 
friends. 

Lucius was the son of Sir Henry Carey, first 
Viscount Falkland, who was for a time Lord 
Deputy of Ireland. 

Though born in England, in 1610, probably in 
the market-town of Burford, in Oxfordshire, Lucius 
was educated chiefly in Ireland, where his father 
went when he was twelve years old. 

He entered Trinity College, Dublin, where, as 
Clarendon with a touch of insular prejudice 
expresses it, u He learned all those exercises and 
languages better than most men do in more 
celebrated places ; insomuch as when he came 
into England, which was when he was about the 
age of eighteen years, he was not only master of 
the Latin tongue, and had read all the poets, and 
other of the best authors with notable judgment 
for that age, but he understood, and spake, and 



256 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

writ French, as if he had spent many years in 
France." 

In Trinity, which had been founded by Queen 
Elizabeth as an essentially Protestant seat of 
learning, Lucius Carey inbibed moderate Anglican 
views, and possibly an antipathy to the Church of 
Rome. Before his father left England he seems 
to have entered the boy's name as a student at St. 
John's College, Cambridge, but nothing further 
appeared to come of the connection. 

Lady Falkland, Lucius' mother, had been con- 
verted to Roman Catholicism by the Jesuits, and 
this so angered her father, Sir Lawrence Tanfield, 
that he left all his property to his eldest grandson, 
entirely ignoring his daughter. So, shortly after 
the youth finished his academical course, he came 
into possession of a goodly income, and two 
country houses, one at Burford and the other at 
Great Tew, about twelve miles from Oxford. At 
the age of twenty he was thus able to take his 
place as an independent country gentleman, and 
the first thing he did was to marry according to 
his own choice, but not according to that of his 
father. In Clarendon's quaint phraseology, " He 
could not repent, having married a lady of a most 
extraordinary wit and judgment, and of the most 
signal virtue, and exemplary life, that the age 



LORD FALKLAND 257 

produced, and who brought him many hopeful 
children, in which he took great delight," but yet 
he felt so much for his father's disappointment in 
losing the wealthy daughter-in-law on whom he 
had set his heart, that he offered to give up his 
houses and estates to him. However, fortunately 
for the prospects of the " many hopeful children," 
this sacrifice was not accepted. 

For a time he and his wife lived abroad, in 
Holland, where he sought the attractions of a 
soldier's life, so easily obtained in that country for 
many years past ; but peace was beginning to 
reign there, and on the death of his father, when 
he succeeded to the Scotch title, he returned to 
England as Viscount Falkland, and retired to his 
home at Great Tew. 

There he gathered round him the most brilliant 
spirits of the day, and he himself was the leader 
of the gifted band. 

He had no personal beauty by which to attract 
men ; he was small and ungainly, plain of face, 
with black eyes, and u flaggy," as Aubrey says, and 
"his aspect so far from inviting that it had 
somewhat in it of simplicity." His voice, too, 
was harsh, and " so untuned, that instead of re- 
conciling, it offended the ear, so that no body 
would have expected musick from that tongue." 

R 



258 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

But music fell from it nevertheless, and such music 
as has lasted from his day to ours. 

Falkland was a poet, a philosopher, and a reli- 
gious thinker. Around him gathered the band of 
poets whom those stormy times produced — Waller, 
Suckling, Carew, Vaughan, and Ben Jonson ; and 
gradually as his nature sobered, with the sobering 
trend of events, he added to these graver students 
such as Hales and Chillingworth, the last of whom 
wrote part of his famous book against the Church 
of Rome in the quiet seclusion of Falkland's country 
home. 

Clarendon has given us a charming picture of 
the life there, so rural that all can have the repose 
they need, and yet so near the University of Oxford 
that " all found their lodgings there, as ready as in 
the colleges, nor did the lord of the house know 
of their coming or going, nor who were in his 
house, till he came to dinner or supper, where 
all still met. Otherwise there was no troublesome 
ceremony or constraint to forbid men to come 
to the house, or to make them weary of staying 
there ; so that many came thither to study in a 
better air, finding all the books they could desire 
in his library, and all the persons together whose 
company they could wish, and not find in any 
other society." 



LORD FALKLAND 259 

Falkland himself was a poet, but his verses, 
though correct and melodious, were not equal 
to those of many of his poet friends ; his most 
graceful lines perhaps are those in memory of 
Lady Hamilton, where he speaks of the courtiers 
weeping for her loss in lines which bring the river 
scenery of his Oxfordshire home vividly before our 
eyes : — 

" Now wearied with their sorrowes, and their way 
Neere the fresh bankes of silver Thames they lay, 
And wept soe fast as if they meant to try 
To weepe a floud like that they wept it by, 
Whose faces, bow'd, and bright, and moist, did shew 
Like lillies loaded with the morning dew." 

But it is not as a poet that Falkland im- 
pressed his friends or those who came after him, 
but as the leader of the moderate thinkers of 
the day. 

He upheld the Anglican Church, with a clear 
insight into the dangers threatening it, such as 
was denied to the chief authorities within it. 

Had Laud, or Charles himself, been able to see 
with Falkland's clearer vision, much trouble might 
have been spared. 

His views seem to have been those of a modern 
Broad Churchman, and when the time came for 
men to take their stand either with Laud and 



260 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

Charles or with Pym and Hampden, it was first 
against the King that Falkland chose his position. 

He had no personal love for Charles ; two such 
natures could have had little in common. Freedom 
of thought, religious liberty, and absolute sincerity, 
these were Falkland's aims, and very different from 
those which influenced the King, and which led him 
to his ruin. 

In his seclusion at Great Tew, Falkland had 
devoted his time to theological studies, and had 
written several works upon religious subjects, so 
that when the question of Episcopacy came before 
Parliament, he brought to the discussion a mind 
well stored with information, as well as an intellect 
able to grasp the importance of the questions under 
debate. Before this he had obeyed the King's call 
to arms in the North, and he served with the Royal 
forces in 1639, in the short and disastrous campaign 
against the Scotch Church. 

On his return, he took his seat in the House 
of Commons as member for Newport, in the Isle 
of Wight, and was present at the three weeks' 
session of the Short Parliament. At the end of 
the same year he joined Pym and Hampden 
in their opposition to the tax of ship-money, 
and at first his sympathies were with the Parlia- 
mentary party. 



LORD FALKLAND 261 

But in his views on Church questions he 
differed fundamentally from the Puritans, and 
when the question came to be discussed as to 
the abolition of the bishops, Falkland drew back 
among the staunch Churchmen. 

Hampden blamed him as a deserter, but he de- 
fended himself by showing how wide the differences 
had grown since he first took a share in the debate. 

His view as to the Episcopacy was that it 
was not a Divine institution, but one of ancient 
ecclesiastical establishment, and therefore one to 
be retained in the Church. 

He gradually drew further from the Parlia- 
mentary leaders, and the King encouraged him 
and his friend Colepeper in their adherence 
to the Royal cause by offering them both public 
posts. Colepeper was made Chancellor of the 
Exchequer, and Falkland, after some hesitation, 
accepted the office of Secretary of State. 

With Clarendon, Falkland, and Colepeper on 
his side, Charles had now his best chance of 
forming a national Church party, but by his 
fatal indecision and obstinacy he lost the oppor- 
tunity, and it never recurred. 

Falkland was firm in his desire to retain the 
bishops, although he was willing that their 
incomes and their temporal rights should, if 



262 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

necessary, be reduced. There is a wisdom be- 
yond that of either Laud or Pym in his words 
upon the subject : " Since all great mutations in 
government are dangerous (even where what is 
introduced by that mutation is such as would 
have been profitable upon a primary foundation), 
and since no wise man will undergo great danger 
but for great necessity, my opinion is that we 
should not root up this ancient tree, as dead as 
it appears, till we have tried whether by this or 
the like topping of the branches, the sap, which 
was unable to feed the whole, may not serve to 
make what is left both grow and flourish." And, 
in his first speech on the Episcopal question, he 
urges wistfully "that bishops may be good men; and 
let us give but good men good rules, we shall 
have both good governors and good times." 

But the good times were not for him. He 
had hoped to reconcile the two parties, and by his 
moderation to serve as a link between them, but 
instead of this being the case he saw the parties 
separating further day by day, and the shadow of 
civil war already beginning to darken the land. 

He could not bear the strain. He lacked the 
moral fibre which might have enabled him to 
fight, as did Pym and Cromwell, with head and 
hands and heart, all concentrated on the one 



LORD FALKLAND 263 

task. As the debates in Parliament became those 
of two hostile parties he seemed to lose his very 
nature, and to droop and wither as a too sensitive 
plant beneath the cruel blast of war. 

He grew sad and pale, silent and unsociable ; 
his very dress lost its wonted neatness, and he 
" grew into a perfect habit of uncheerfulness." 
Only " when there was any overture or hope of 
peace he would be more erect and vigorous, and 
exceedingly solicitous to press anything which he 
thought might promote it ; and sitting among 
his friends, often, after a deep silence and fre- 
quent sighs, would, with a shrill and sad accent, 
ingeminate the word ' Peace, peace ' ; and would 
passionately profess that the very agony of the 
war, and the view of the calamities and desolation 
the kingdom did and must endure, took his sleep 
from him and would shortly break his heart." 

So wrote his friend Lord Clarendon, and with 
only too much truth. 

There is no doubt that Falkland ceased to care 
for life when the hope of peace was over. At 
the battle of Edge Hill he exposed himself with 
reckless gallantry, which drew forth a friendly 
rebuke from Clarendon, urging him " not to en- 
gage his person to those dangers which were 
not incumbent to him." 



264 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

But the warning had no effect, and the end 
came at the battle of Newbury, on September 
the 20th, 1643. 

Different tales are told of his behaviour on the 
morning of the fight. 

Whitelock says that he " called for a clean 
shirt " on rising, saying that " if he were slain 
he should not be found in foul linen " ; and that 
as he went forth he cried to his companions that 
u he was weary of the times, and foresaw much 
misery to his own country, and did believe he 
should be out of it ere night." His friend Clarendon 
describes him as very " cheerful " when, " as he was 
naturally inquisitive after danger," he " put himself 
into the head of Sir John Byron's regiment, which 
he believed was like to be in the hottest service." 

But all authorities agree that he charged with 
his men, between two hedges lined with the 
musketeers of the enemy, and fell almost at once, 
mortally wounded in the body. 

He was buried the next morning, in the 
churchyard at Great Tew, with such military 
haste that the exact spot is not known ; but 
could a stone be placed above his broken heart 
it could bear no fitter inscription than the terse 
remark of his friend Clarendon : " He died as 
much of the Time as of the Bullet." 



CHAPTER X 

TWO PROSE WRITERS : LORD CLARENDON 
AND SIR THOMAS BROWNE 

Falkland was mourned by many friends, but 
by none more sincerely or more faithfully than 
Edward Hyde, afterwards Lord Clarendon, the 
famous historian of the times in which they 
both lived. 

The parish register of Dinton, in the county 
of Wiltshire, contains this entry : " The sixth 
year of the reign of our most gracious sovereign 
Lord King James, Ann. Dom. 1608. In this 
year, the two and twentye day of February, 
Henry Hide of Dinton, Gent., had a son 
christened named Edward." According to the 
present mode of dating, this is the year 1609, 
though the older notation was used in the parish 
register. 

Henry Hyde was a man of some learning, and 

he sent his son Edward to Magdalen Hall, Oxford, 

where, as he tells us himself, he was regarded 

" rather with the opinion of a young man of 

265 



266 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

parts and pregnancy of wit, than that he had 
improved it much by industry." That industry 
for which he was renowned in his later days 
was evidently not acquired in the cheerful atmos- 
phere of Magdalen Hall. 

From Oxford he passed to the Middle Temple, 
and when he was scarcely twenty, and was on 
circuit with his uncle the Chief Justice, his life 
was nearly ended by a violent attack of small- 
pox at Cambridge. So severe was it that he 
tells us the disease " was spread all over him 
very furiously, and had so far prevailed over 
him that for some hours both his friends and 
physician consulted of nothing but of the place 
and manner of his burial." Their anticipations, 
however, proved mistaken ; he recovered, and 
shortly after married, but only to lose his bride 
within a year by the same dread malady that had 
so nearly taken his own life. Three years after- 
wards he married again, the daughter of Sir 
Thomas Aylesbury, "with whom he lived very 
comfortably in the most uncomfortable times, 
and very joyfully in those times when matter of joy 
was administered, for the space of five or six and 
thirty years." It is characteristic of Clarendon's 
inaccuracy in writing that he seems uncertain as 
to the number of years of his own married life. 



TWO PROSE WRITERS 267 

His father, to whom he was devotedly attached, 
died soon after his second marriage, whereby he 
lost, as he says, " not only the best father, but 
the best friend, and the best companion he ever 
had or could have " ; but he was a man of many 
friends throughout most of his life. Falkland was 
the best beloved of all, perhaps because of the 
vast difference between them in character and 
disposition, for there could be no greater con- 
trast to the small delicate figure of the sensitive 
poet-theologian than the " fair, ruddy, fat, middle- 
statured handsome man " who " was of a very 
cheerful and open nature, without any dissimu- 
lation ; and delivered his opinion of things or 
persons, where it was convenient, without reserve 
or disguise ; and was at least tenacious enough of 
his opinion, and never departed from it out of 
compliance with any man." 

They were devoted friends, and used to take 
their seats daily side by side in the House of 
Commons ; so regularly that, if by chance one 
of them entered alone, the other members would 
always leave vacant the place at his side. 

Edward Hyde was able and industrious ; he 
longed for reform, and at first went with the 
Parliamentary party, noticeably in its condemna- 
tion of Strafford, although, unlike his friend Falk- 



268 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

land, he had a strong personal attachment to the 
King. 

But when the Church questions came under 
debate, Hyde could no longer side with Pym 
and his party ; he was utterly opposed to the 
abolition of the bishops, and he formed with 
Falkland part of that band of Church and State 
workers who, under an abler leader than Charles I., 
might have done much to avert the Civil War. 

He had his first interview with the King while 
the question of the bishops was under discussion, 
. and Charles told him " that he had heard from 
all hands how much he was beholden to him ; 
and that when all his servants in the House of 
Commons either neglected his service or could 
not appear usefully in it, he took all occasions 
to do him service, for which he thought fit to 
give him his own thanks, and to assure him that 
he would remember it to his advantage." And 
speaking of his zeal for the Church, the King said 
for that " he thanked him more than for all the 
rest." To which Hyde answered that "he was 
very happy that his Majesty was pleased with 
what he did ; but if he had commanded him 
to have withdrawn his affection and reverence 
for the Church he would not have obeyed 
him." 



TWO PROSE WRITERS 269 

He and Charles agreed well together in their 
honest but narrow views on Church questions, 
and first to the elder King Charles, and then to 
the younger, Edward Hyde devoted his whole 
energies of brain and will, and what worldly sub- 
stances those rather fickle masters allowed him to 
accumulate. There was little to be gained by 
serving the King at the time he elected to do 
so ; his service was that of an honest man, who 
gave his all to the party which had his sympathies, 
and his sound learning, legal ability, and inde- 
fatigable industry made him a valuable servant 
to the Royal cause. 

He worked for Charles, together with his two 
friends Falkland and Colepeper, through the 
stormy scenes in Parliament which led to the 
war, and when the Royal Standard was raised 
at Nottingham he seemed to greet the opening 
of hostilities with his habitual cheerfulness. Sir 
Edmund Varney, the King's standard bearer, 
who was one of his many friends, told him that 
"he was very glad to see him, in so universal 
a damp, under which the spirits of most men 
were oppressed, retain still his natural vivacity 
and cheerfulness." To which Hyde answered 
that u he was in truth beholden to his con- 
stitution, which did not incline him to despair ; 



270 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

otherwise, that he had no pleasant prospect be- 
fore him, but thought as ill of affairs as most 
men did." 

At Edge Hill he did not take an active part 
in the fight, but had the charge of the two young 
princes, Charles, Prince of Wales, and the Duke 
of York, who were aged respectively twelve and 
nine years. 

He was now given the post of Chancellor of 
the Exchequer, and continued to hold it, in spite 
of being twice offered that of Secretary of State, 
the second time in succession to his friend Falk- 
land, who had fallen on the field of Newbury. 

He worked hard at the impossible task of trying 
to make Charles rule as a constitutional King, 
and he had his last interview with him in March, 
1644, before going down into the west country as 
a member of the Prince of Wales' Council. 

The King cautioned him as to differences which 
he had observed between Hyde and Colepeper, of 
which Hyde promised to beware in future. " With 
which," he says, "his Majesty appeared abundantly 
satisfied and pleased ; and embracing him, gave 
him his hand to kiss. And he immediately went 
to horse, and followed the Prince ; and this was 
the last time the Chancellor ever saw that gracious 
and excellent King." 



TWO PROSE WRITERS 271 

From that time Hyde " followed the Prince " 
indeed ; through dark days and dangers, through 
good report and ill, from the time of his escape 
out of England to Jersey, and thence to Holland, 
all through the poverty and hardships of the mimic 
court in a foreign land, to the day when he rode 
beside him at his triumphant return, and watched 
the gorgeous pageant of his coronation, and con- 
tinued his Chancellor in reality as he had been 
for years in name. So he " followed the Prince " 
until he was sent forth by that very prince whose 
exile he had shared for so long, disgraced and 
humiliated before the world, to seek in vain a 
resting-place for his broken spirits and failing 
health, and to be at the last denied his dying 
request for leave to return and end his days 
at home among his own children. Such was 
the reward of fidelity to Charles II. There were 
indeed strange vicissitudes in the lives of Kings' 
followers at that day, but hardly any could 
be more marked than those in the career of 
Edward Hyde. 

The Queen, Henrietta Maria, had always disliked 
him, and distrusted his influence over her husband ; 
and after the tragedy at Whitehall her opinion 
was unchanged, and she did all in her power 
to weaken his power over her son. Charles II. 



272 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

had a personal liking for his hardworking and 
disinterested minister, who exercised over hirn an 
authority which their relative positions would not 
have justified under ordinary circumstances, and 
who gave him many a well-deserved rebuke when 
his natural irritability could no longer endure the 
indolent selfishness of the man for whom other 
men fought with such disinterested devotion. 

Charles had certain small allowances from 
foreign powers, but the poverty of the exiled 
English Court was excessive. " All our money is 
gone," writes Hyde, in August 1650, "and let me 
never prosper if I know or can imagine how we 
can get bread a month longer." 

In December 1652, he writes that the King is 
" reduced to greater distresse than you can believe 
or imagyne " ; and a year later he says : " I do Jiot 
know that any man is yet dead for want of bread, 
which really I wonder at. I am sure the King 
himself owes for all he hath eaten since April. 
. . . Five or six of us eat together one meal a day, 
for a pistole a week ; but all of us owe, for God 
knows how many weeks, to the poor woman that 
feeds us." But still he writes bravely to Nicholas, 
" Keep up your spirits, and take heed of sinking 
under that burthen you never kneeled to take up." 

But the same weary task was his for years, that 



TWO PROSE WRITERS 273 

of trying to control expenses when there was little 
or nothing to expend, and in 1657 he wrote from 
Bruges : " Having looked over the state of the 
debts, and finding that every bit of meat, every 
drop of drink, all the fire, and all the candle that 
hath been spent, since the King's coming hither, is 
entirely owed for ; and how to get credit for a week 
more is no easy matter, I would I were at Breda." 

It was during this time of exile that Hyde's 
daughter Anne became Maid of Honour to the 
Princess Mary of Orange, which position led even- 
tually to her secret marriage with the Duke of York, 
afterwards James II. Her father expressed great 
anger at her presumption, when the marriage was 
discovered, although it must have gratified his private 
ambition. So, in an industrious correspondence 
with friends of his exiled King, and in an earnest 
endeavour to keep some show of Royal state 
around the person of that King, Hyde spent the 
years until the Restoration. He was with Charles 
then when he landed again in his own kingdom, 
he attended him on his triumphal journey to 
London, and saw him in his splendour when the 
aged Juxon crowned him with the crown of the 
White King ; and, though not unopposed, he then 
filled the office — of which he had hitherto borne 
the empty title — of Lord Chancellor. 



274 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

He was created Earl of Clarendon, and was 
trusted and honoured by the King, but he never 
took any trouble to make himself popular with his 
contemporaries. 

His hard life abroad had not taught him 
tolerance, especially in religious matters, and his 
views on Church questions were so severe that the 
strict laws against Nonconformists, under which 
Bunyan and Baxter were imprisoned, were called 
the Clarendon Code. 

It was he who raised Jeremy Taylor to a bishop- 
ric, but he lacked the kindly breadth of view so 
conspicuous in most of Taylor's work. 

Clarendon had been trained in a narrow school, 
and he grew narrower as he grew older. 

The selfish irresponsibility of Charles II. left him 
to bear the whole odium of the failure of the 
Dutch War, and what the nation as a whole con- 
sidered the disgraceful terms of the peace with 
Holland. At the same time he added to his 
unpopularity by his love of display, and by build- 
ing himself a magnificent residence, which he called 
Clarendon House, during the years 1666 and 
1667, while the plague and the fire were in turn 
devastating London. 

In 1667 he lost his wife, "which," he says, 
" was so sudden, unexpected, and irreparable a 



TWO PROSE WRITERS 275 

loss, that he had not courage to support it." And 
only a few days after her death the King, in selfish 
and indolent compliance with the wishes of Parlia- 
ment, sent to demand from him the Great Seal, 
his sign of office. 

At first he refused to give it up, or to submit to 
the Parliamentary accusations, but after his im- 
peachment he seemed to lose heart, and worn in 
mind and body he left the country, to be followed 
by a public sentence of banishment. Suffering 
as he was from the gout, he was at first denied a 
resting-place by the French authorities ; although, 
as he bitterly told them, it would need a greater 
power than that of the French king to make a 
dying man move on. 

For a time he rallied his strength, and with his 
indomitable industry he continued his " History 
of the Rebellion," which he had begun in Jersey, 
besides writing a " Vindication " of his own conduct, 
and many small papers. 

Shortly before his death he begged leave from 
the King to return home to die in peace among his 
children, but Charles refused to grant this last wish 
of the minister, who, whatever his failings, had 
served him with consistent faith and honesty, and 
had shared his exile with cheerful devotion. 

He died at Rouen on December 9th, 1674, at 



276 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

the age of sixty-four, and his body was brought 
home and buried, according to Anthony Wood, 
in Henry VII.'s Chapel, in Westminster Abbey. 

As a minister he was faithful to the Church 
and the Crown ; honest, and of great abilities, a 
learned man and an indefatigable worker. But 
he was narrow in his views, passionate, and not 
far-seeing in his judgment; he was also timid at 
times, or perhaps indolent like his master, seeing 
evils clearly, but yet lacking the courage needed 
to stamp them out. He was a lover of learning, 
and promoted the establishment of the Royal 
Society, and to Charles II. he filled the part of 
tutor and governor until the time that the " Merry 
Monarch " felt strong enough to cast him off. 

In his " History of the Rebellion " we have 
delightful pictures of many of his friends, and 
the important figures of the time. The work is 
not written with the attempted impartiality of 
the modern historian, it is less a history than 
a collection of materials from which history can 
be compiled, and such seems to have been his 
own idea. 

He wrote to Charles I. from Jersey when he 
began the work : " I flatter myself with an opinion 
that / am doing your Majesty some service in this 
excellent island whilst I am preparing the story 



TWO PROSE WRITERS 277 

of your sufferings, that posterity may tremble at 
the reading of what the present age blushes not 
to execute ; " and much is owed by later writers 
to his minute and skilful delineations of character 
and his description of events. 

The words in which he describes the Earl of 
Essex might well be applied to himself ; " He was, 
in his friendships, just and constant, and would 
not have practised foully against those he took to 
be enemies. No man had credit enough with 
him to corrupt him in point of loyalty to the 
King, whilst he thought himself wise enough to 
know what treason was." 

In Clarendon we have the historian of the 
Civil War, the man who had lived in the struggle 
from the beginning, and who continued in it 
until the end ; and he has given us the picture 
of men and events as they appeared to an eye- 
witness, in a clear, forcible, and yet majestic style 
of English prose peculiarly his own. There 
could hardly have been a greater contrast than 
between his life and that of the second great 
prose writer of the day, Sir Thomas Browne. 

Clarendon walked the broad highway of public 
life, and wrote in the midst of its turmoil ; Sir 
Thomas Browne was content to let his genius 
stray in unfrequented paths, in a region which 



278 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

few visit at any time, and fewer still amidst the 
ferment of a mighty revolution. But his life and 
writings are an invaluable memorial that, even in 
the England of the Great Rebellion, there were 
men who had thoughts for other things than 
Church government, prerogative, and taxation. 

Thomas Browne was born in London, on 
October 19th, 1605, and was the son of a well- 
to-do Cheshire merchant. 

He was educated at Winchester, and at Broad- 
gate Hall, soon to become Pembroke College, 
Oxford, and then spent some years in foreign 
travel, visiting Ireland, France, Italy, and Holland, 
and in the last obtaining the degree of doctor of 
physic at Leyden. 

When he returned home he practised as a 
doctor, first in Oxfordshire and afterwards for 
the rest of his life at Norwich, and there he 
married the daughter of Edward Mileham of 
Burlingham, Norfolk, " a lady," says his bio- 
grapher Whitefoot, " of such symmetrical propor- 
tion to her worthy husband, both in the graces 
of her body and mind, that they seemed to come 
together by a kind of natural magnetism." 

They had eleven children, of whom his corre- 
spondence preserves the memory especially of that 
of the two elder sons, Edward and Thomas. 




Walker & Cockerel!. 



Sir Thomas Browne. 

From the original in the Hall of the College of Physicians. 



TWO PROSE WRITERS 279 

Edward followed his father's profession, and 
inherited his love of learning and his industry, 
though without the genius which illuminated 
every subject when touched on by Sir Thomas. 
The son wrote constantly to tell his father 
incidents and details likely to interest him long 
after he had left the old home in Norwich, and 
become a busy London doctor, and Censor of 
the College of Physicians, of which he was after- 
wards President ; he was also one of the physicians 
of Charles II. 

Sir Thomas' second son was his namesake, and 
was a gallant high-spirited lad who became a 
naval officer, and died young. Delightful letters 
passed between him and his learned father, who 
trusted the boy so implicitly as to send him to 
France alone for purposes of education when he 
was only fourteen. 

The Norfolk doctor was an affectionate hus- 
band and father, and seemed to cultivate and to 
keep the sympathy and devotion of his family 
throughout his life, while yet pursuing his studies, 
and working out his fanciful problems in a 
beautiful shadowy world of his own. 

His a Religio Medici" which is his best known 
work, was published without his own agency. He 
wrote it about the year 1634, not intending it for 



2 8o WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

the press, and lent it in turn to a circle of friends, 
through whom, after eight years, it finally strayed 
into the hands of the printers. 

The work excited universal attention by its learn- 
ing, its beauty of sentiment, and its novelty of 
treatment. 

It opens with a confession of faith, in which he 
seems anxious to free himself from the charge of 
unbelief, which he terms " the general scandal of 
my profession." Outward symbols had for him a 
beauty of their own ; he was a Royalist and a 
Churchman, but he was not a party man, and he 
was in no sense a bigot. " Holy water," he says, 
" and crucifix (dangerous to the common people) 
deceive not my judgment nor abuse my devotion 
at all." But yet he goes on to say, " I should 
violate my own arm rather than a church, nor 
willingly deface the name of saint or martyr. At 
the sight of a cross or crucifix I can dispense with 
my hat, but scarce with the thought or memory of 
my Saviour." The spirit of tolerant devotion, so 
seldom met with in his time, breathes in his words 
on the Ave-Mary bell : " I could never," he writes, 
" hear the Ave-Mary bell without an elevation, or 
think it a sufficient warrant, because they erred in 
one circumstance, for me to err in all — that is, in 
silence and dumb contempt. Whilst, therefore, 



TWO PROSE WRITERS 281 

they directed their devotions to her, I offered mine 
to God, and rectified the errors of their prayers by 
rightly ordering my own." And of the Pope he 
writes : " It is as uncharitable a point in us to fall 
upon those popular scurrilities and opprobrious 
scoffs of the Bishop of Rome, to whom, as a tem- 
poral prince, we owe the duty of good language." 
He showed his unlikeness to the men of his day 
when he said, " I have no genius to disputes in 
religion, and have often thought it wisdom to de- 
cline them, especially upon a disadvantage, or 
when the cause of truth might suffer in the weak- 
ness of my patronage." And again in the beauti- 
ful words as to his own belief : " There are two 
books from whence I collect my divinity. Besides 
that written one of God, another of his servant, 
Nature, that universal and publick manuscript, 
that lies expansed into the eyes of all. Those that 
never saw Him in the one have discovered Him 
in the other." 

Throughout the book the same wide views are 
there, so unlike those of his time that he was 
charged with irreligion and denial of Christ, al- 
though he says himself, " I believe He was dead 
and buried and rose again, and desire to see Him 
in His glory." 

He discusses at length the question of miracles, 



282 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

and of witches and supernatural visitations, in 
which he was always much interested, correspond- 
ing with his eldest son on the subject at various 
times. ( * That miracles have been," he says, " I do 
believe ; that they may yet be wrought by the living 
I do not deny : but have no confidence in those 
which are fathered on the dead." He confesses to 
what he calls " an unhappy curiosity " for examin- 
ing " the verity of Scripture by the concordance of 
human history," and it is upon the minute details 
of biblical history that his curiosity seems especially 
to exercise itself. 

In one of his works he discusses at length the 
question as to the exact age of Methusaleh, and 
also gives an account of the fishes which abound 
in the Lake of Galilee, with a view to ascertaining 
what could have been the kind of fish of which 
Christ partook with His disciples after His re- 
surrection. 

Into such minute points Sir Thomas Browne's 
mind loved to stray, and his quiet study in the old 
town of Norwich forms a pleasant contrast to the 
poverty and exile in which Clarendon's History 
was produced. 

The second part of the " Religio Medici" deals 
with his view of what is meant by charity. " I hold 
not," he says, " so narrow a conceit of this virtue 



TWO PROSE WRITERS 283 

as to conceive that to give alms is only to be 
charitable, or think a piece of liberality can com- 
prehend the total of charity." He expresses his 
own love and sympathy with the whole of God's 
creation, in joy, in grief, in life, and in death. " I 
never hear the toll," he says, " of a passing bell, 
though in my mirth, without my prayers and best 
wishes for the departing spirit. I cannot go to 
cure the body of my patient, but I forget my pro- 
fession and call unto God for his soul." 

Of his own life he speaks as " a miracle of thirty 
years, which to relate were not a history but 
a piece of poetry." So can a brilliant intellect 
illuminate the seemingly prosaic existence of a 
local doctor ! 

He took no part in the stirring events of the 
Civil War, and one of the few occasions on which 
his quiet life seemed to touch that of the outside 
world was when he received his knighthood in 
1 67 1 on Charles II.'s visit to Norwich. Evelyn, 
the writer of the famous Diary, was among the 
friends of Sir Thomas Browne, and he gives a 
vivid description of their first interview, and of the 
" house and garden being a paradise and cabinet 
of rarities, and that of the best collections, espe- 
cially medals, books, plants, and natural things." 

His interest in " things " was peculiar ; he 



284 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

recognised no distinctions between things great 
or small, and his fancy wove curious webs of 
speculative beauty around the most homely objects. 
Above all other characteristics he was a humourist 
in the truest sense of the word, as it is defined by 
Walter Pater : " He is one to whom all the world 
is but a spectacle, in which nothing is really alien 
from himself, who has hardly a sense of the dis- 
tinction between great and little among things that 
are at all, and whose half-pitying, half-amused 
sympathy is called out especially by the seemingly 
small interests and traits of character in the things 
or the people around him." 

In his book on "Vulgar Errors" he gets to- 
gether and discusses at length, and with a wonder- 
ful display of learning, the most amazing collection 
of popular superstitions and beliefs : that crystal 
is really congealed ice ; that a pot full of ashes 
can contain as much water as it would when 
empty ; that an elephant has no joints, and is 
caught by felling the tree against which it rests its 
stiff limbs in sleep ; that ostriches feed upon horse- 
shoes ; and that storks will only live in republics 
and free states. 

In his work on " Urn-Burial " he discusses the 
various customs of interment among the nations 
of antiquity, with the minute learning and strange 



TWO PROSE WRITERS 285 

mixture of dreamy faith and fantastic imagery that 
run through all his writings. " To live indeed," 
he says at the end of the book, " is to be again 
ourselves, which being not only an hope, but an 
evidence in noble believers, 'tis all one to lie in St. 
Innocent's churchyard as in the sands of Egypt." 

He was a most industrious writer throughout 
his long life, and his works well repay careful study, 
though they cannot be fully discussed here. His 
style has a charm of its own, and one which left 
its mark upon the prose of the time at which he 
wrote. 

And so the quiet years went by, and he passed 
the threescore years and ten, and saw his children's 
children around him. 

Then in the midst of his busy life of learning 
he was suddenly stricken down in his seventy- 
seventh year, and died on his birthday, October 
the 19th, 1682. 

His life was spent apart from that of the multi- 
tude ; the blast of trumpets and the roar of cannon 
had no place in his quiet routine ; the angry de- 
bates at Westminster, and the religious dissensions 
which shook England to her foundations had no 
power to lure him from the shadowy speculative 
land in which he dwelt. He might have lived in 
any age and belonged to none. In theology, in 



286 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

art, and in philosophy he seems to stand always 
ready to discuss with equal impartiality and with 
any audience the authenticity of miracles, the 
comparative merits of urn-burial or churchyard 
monument, and such questions as the capture of 
a sleeping elephant, or " dreams out of the ivory 
gate and visions before midnight." 



CHAPTER XI 

THE POETS : WALLER, CAREW, HERRICK, LOVELACE, 
AND SUCKLING. VAUGHAN, TRAHERNE, CRA- 
SHAW, AND COWLEY 

Many singers, lyrical and religious, arose during 
the troubled years between the reigns of James I. 
and James II. 

It was significant of the time that the careers of so 
many among them were so brief. Herbert, Crashaw, 
Lovelace, Suckling, and Traherne, all died before 
they were forty ; and one cannot but wonder what 
wealth of lyric poetry would be ours, had the clash 
of arms, and the poverty of a country at war with 
itself, not intervened to silence many a sweet song. 

The band of Court poets, as they may be called, 
stands prominently forth, their lives and their verses 
alike dedicated to the service of their King ; and 
among them we may number Waller, Carew, 
Herrick, Lovelace, and Suckling. Vaughan and 
Traherne may be looked upon as entirely religious 
poets, and Crashaw as chiefly so, while Cowley 

stands somewhat by himself. 

287 



288 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

Edmund Waller was a Hertfordshire man, born 
in 1606, of an ancient and dignified family, and 
educated at Eton, and King's College, Cambridge. 

He was wealthy, accomplished, clever, and fas- 
cinating, but of a poor, timid nature, which unfitted 
him to take his place in public life at the time of 
the Civil War. 

Had his character been equal to his ability, he 
might have had a grand career, for he was in 
Parliament when only seventeen, and was so much 
admired there for the aptness and brilliancy of his 
speeches that he was called " the darling of the 
House of Commons." 

His witty repartees were always ready, but he 
had no sound judgment or disinterested views with 
which to second his brilliant but more superficial 
qualities. 

Although he was a first cousin of Hampden's, 
and so nearly connected with Cromwell himself, 
he shifted constantly between the two parties ; and 
in 1643 he was discovered in a plot for betraying 
London into the hands of the King. 

He was fined -£10,000, imprisoned for a time in 
the Tower, and then banished from the country, 
to return amid the band of gallant soldiers, earnest 
Churchmen, and men of letters, who followed 
Charles II. to his Restoration. 




Walter & Cockerel!. 

Edmund Waller. 

From John Riley s fainting in the National Portrait Gallery. 



THE POETS 289 

Waller was made Provost of Eton, where he 
had learned and played as a boy. He lived to see 
James II. ascend the throne, and died at Beacons- 
field, in Buckinghamshire, at the ripe age of eighty- 
one. 

His poetical reputation was great during his 
lifetime, and has varied considerably during the 
last two centuries. 

The chief number of his poems are love verses, 
addressed to " Sacharissa," by which name he calls 
Lady Dorothy Sidney, whom he wooed unsuccess- 
fully for some time after his wife's death, but who 
became the Countess of Sunderland instead of 
Mrs. Waller. 

His last verses might well represent the farewell 
to earth of that eager band of Royalist poets whose 
lives had been passed amid such changing scenes. 
Waller, unlike many of them, lived long enough to 
view the storm and stress from the far-off heights 
of a calm old age. 

" The seas are quiet now, the wind gives o'er ; 
So calm are we when passions are no more ! 
For then we know how vain it is to boast 
Of fleeting things so certain to be lost. 
Clouds of affection from our younger eyes 
Conceals that emptiness that age descries. 

The soul's dark cottage, battered and decayed, 
Lets in new life through chinks that Time has made ; 

T 



290 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

Stronger by weakness, wiser men become 
As they draw near to their eternal home. 
Leaving the old, both worlds at once they view 
That stand upon the threshold of the new." 

Beside Waller we see the courtly figure of Thomas 
Carew, Sewer, or cup-bearer, to Charles I., a gentle- 
man of the privy chamber, a friend of Clarendon, 
and the true poet of the courtly atmosphere in which 
his life was spent. 

Carew was a lover of all pleasant human enjoy- 
ments ; his affections were given to fair faces, 
sweet blossoming gardens, and good dinners, and 
of such he sang. 

His verses were written with care, and polished 
with elegance ; they are full of bright fancy and 
tender feeling, and are among the most melodious 
lyrics of his day. 

His elegy on the accomplished poet Donne, 
who belonged to an earlier period, has been con- 
sidered by some to be Carew's finest piece of 
work, and ends with what Professor Saintsbury 
calls the " splendid epitaph " — 

" Here lies a King that ruled as he thought fit 
The universal monarchy of wit." 

The smoothly-flowing little poem, The Enquiry, 
illustrates well the quaint, fanciful way in which 
the Cavalier Lyrists expressed their feeling for what 
they most admired : — 



THE POETS 291 

" Amongst the myrtles as I walked, 
Love and my sighs thus intertalked : 
'Tell me,' said I, in deep distress, 
' Where may I find my shepherdess ? ' 

1 Thou fool,' said Love, ' know'st thou not this, 

In everything that's good she is ? 

In yonder tulip go and seek, 

There thou mayst find her lip, her cheek. 

' In yon enamelled pansy^by, 

There thou shalt have her curious eye. 

In bloom of peach, in rosy bud, 

There wave the streamers of her blood.' 



"Tis true, 1 said I, and thereupon 
I went to pluck them one by one 
To make of parts an union ; 
But on a sudden all was gone. 

With that I stopped ; said Love, ' These be, 

Fond man, resemblances of thee ; 

And as these flowers, thy joys shall die, 

E'en in the twinkling of an eye, 

And all thy hopes of her shall wither, 

Like these short sweets thus knit together.' " 

Next we have Robert Herrick, whose fame 
among Cavalier lyrists has exceeded that of all 
others, and whose sunny Devonshire parsonage 
forms as pleasant a picture to the mind wearied 
with sound of battle as does the quiet Norfolk 
home of Sir Thomas Browne. 



292 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

Though he spent much of his life in the 
country, Herrick was by birth and inclination 
a Londoner, and his poetry contains continual 
comparison between the two states of existence, 
in which his sentiments are invariably those of 
Browning's Florentine compelled to dwell for 
economy " Up at a Villa," instead of " Down in 
the City." 

Herrick was born in Cheapside, in 1594, and 
educated at St. John's College, Cambridge. He was 
ordained in the Church of England, in 1629, as 
Rector of Dean-Prior, on the southern edge of 
Dartmoor, and there he remained, almost without 
a break, until his death, in 1674, so that through- 
out the Civil War, like Sir Thomas Browne, "he 
was out of the storm." But the years he had 
spent as a young man in London seemed to live 
always in his memory as those most congenial to 
him ; he longed always for a return to the busy 
life of the great town, even though his power 
of describing the glowing beauties of the country 
has never been excelled. 

He returned once to London, when he wrote : 

" From the dull confines of the drooping west, 
To see the day spring from the pregnant east, 
Ravish'd in spirit, I come, nay more, I fly 
To thee, blest place of my nativity ! 



THE POETS 293 

London my home is ; though by hard fate sent 
Into a long and irksome banishment ; 
Yet since call'd back, henceforward let me be, 
O native country, repossess'd by thee ! " 

He had been ejected from his living as a 
Royalist in 1647, but was restored to it in 1662, 
and he lived there for the remaining twelve years 
of his life. 

In his Ode for Ben Jonson, we see again his 
wistful longing for the cheery town meetings from 
which he is withdrawn. 

"Ah Ben ! 
Say how or when 
Shall we, thy guests, 
Meet at those lyric feasts, 

Made at the Sun, 
The Dog, the Triple Tun ; 
Where we such clusters had, 
As made us nobly wild, not mad ? 

And yet each verse of thine 
Out-did the meat, out-did the frolic wine." 

The country life, so inspiring and sufficient to 
many poets, seems in his case to sap some of his 
vitality. He declares, in his lines 

To Sir Clipsby Crew, 
" Since to the country first I came, 
I have lost my former flame ; 
And, methinks, I not inherit, 
As I did, my ravish'd spirit. 
If I write a verse or two, 
'Tis with very much ado." 



294 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

So he speaks. We cannot agree with him 
when we read his fresh sweet poems of country 
life ; there one can feel the breath of the soft 
west wind over the damp Devonshire soil, and 
smell the flowers and the hay, and hear the 
lowing of cattle and the song of the birds, and we 
feel the world would have been poorer had Robert 
Herrick remained a mere poet of the town. He 
was the sweetest singer of his time, and his free, 
joyous descriptions of West Country life, its 
" green rushes . . . with cooler oaken boughs," its 
ceremonies for Candlemas Eve and St. Distaff's 
Day, and its Fairies which 

" Set each platter in his place ; 
Rake the fire up, and get 
Water in, ere sun be set," 

show us a world pleasant alike to the eye and ear, 
and hardly less real than that which echoed to the 
tramp of Rupert's horsemen, or to the ringing 
words of Cromwell's speeches. 

In the Argument of the Hesperides Herrick gives 
a goodly list of his rustic topics, and most alluring 
do they sound : 

" I sing of brooks, of blossoms, birds, and bowers, 
Of April, May, of June, and July-flowers ; 
I sing of May-poles, hock-carts, wassails, wakes, 
Of bridegrooms, brides, and of their bridal-cakes. 



THE POETS 295 

I sing of dews, of rains, and, piece by piece, 
Of balm, of oil, of spice, and ambergris. 
I sing of times trans-shifting ; and I write 
How roses first came red, and lilies white. 
I write of groves, of twilights, and I sing 
The court of Mab, and of the Fairy King." 

His exquisite music is nowhere better shown 
than in the verses on Corinna's going a Maying, 
and his little poems Cherry Ripe and Gather ye 
rosebuds while ye may, are too well known as songs 
to need comment. 

His one passionate love poem, To Anthea, be- 
ginning, " Bid me to live," forms one of the finest 
songs in the English language ; and perhaps as 
interesting as any of his poems to those who 
cherish his memory, is the Thanksgiving to God, 
in which he enumerates the daily blessings of 
his life — his little house with its kitchen small, 
a little buttery with bin and loaf, the glowing fire, 
the homely meal, and the hen and sheep and 
kine all ready to minister to his everyday needs. 

Such are some of the poems contained in his 
Hesperides, than which it has been said " there is 
not a sunnier book in the world. To open it is 
to enter a rich garden on a summer afternoon, 
and to smell the perfume of a wealth of flowers 
and warm herbs and ripening fruits." 

His other collection of verse, Noble Num- 



296 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

bers, is religious, and suffers by comparison with 
Herbert's religious poetry from the fact that 
Herrick entirely lacked the fervent spirit of per- 
sonal devotion which breathes in every verse of 
Herbert's. He was a lover of all that is joyous 
and beautiful, and through his love of created 
beauty he was lifted at times to thoughts of the 
Creator, but his religion went little beyond that 
point. His attitude to heaven is expressed in 
the cheery lines at the end of the Arguments, 
where he has dwelt with minute care on the 
earthly items in his song, and ends with the simple 
statement : 

" I write of Hell ; I sing, and ever shall 
Of Heaven, — and hope to have it after all." 

His religious poems owe their value not to 
spiritual fervour, but to the vivid wealth of detail 
in which he excels. 

The Litany, in which he utters his last earthly 
thoughts and wishes, when he feels death drawing 
near, might well form a companion to Matthew 
Arnold's poem on his " Last Wish " : 

" In the hour of my distress, 
When temptations me oppress, 
And when I my sins confess, 
Sweet Spirit, comfort me ! 



THE POETS 297 

When I lie within my bed, 
Sick in heart and sick in head, 
And with doubts discomforted, 
Sweet Spirit, comfort me ! 

When the house doth sigh and weep, 
And the world is drown'd in sleep, 
Yet mine eyes the watch do keep, 
Sweet Spirit, comfort me ! 



When the passing-bell doth toll, 
And the furies in a shoal 
Come to fright a passing soul, 
Sweet Spirit, comfort me ! 

When the priest his last hath pray'd, 
And I nod to what is said, 
'Cause my speech is now decay'd, 
Sweet Spirit, comfort me ! 

When the Judgment is reveal'd, 
And that open'd which was seal'd ; 
When to Thee I have appeal'd, 
Sweet Spirit, comfort me ! " 

Herrick was, like George Herbert, a country- 
parson ; but, if one might divide the word, one 
would say that Herbert wrote always as a parson, 
and Herrick wrote from a broader, breezier out- 
look that savoured only of the country. When 
in extremis his cry went up to God, it was not 
as a parson he cried, hardly as a Churchman, 
but as one who came at last to seek the Giver 



298 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

through his loving lifelong joy in the beauty of 
the gifts. 

After Herrick we must give a word of notice 
to two Royalist poets whose lives were run in 
stormier paths than his — Richard Lovelace and 
Sir John Suckling. 

Lovelace had a short and chequered career 
after his early youth, which had been passed in 
the full blaze of Court favour, and had ill-fitted 
him for the stormy days on which he fell. 

He was rich and popular, and was known as 
the handsomest man of his time, and possibly 
these qualities were among the reasons which led 
to his being chosen to present the Kentish Petition 
to the House of Commons. 

However, personal beauty had little effect upon 
Cromwell's Parliament, and Lovelace was sent to 
the Tower. 

Later on he was reported as killed, and his 
betrothed married another. This broke his heart, 
and ruined his life ; he became reckless, and 
died in want, in a cellar. During his imprison- 
ment he wrote the only two among his lyrics by 
which he is now remembered, Going to the War, 
in which occurs the famous couplet : 

" I could not love thee, dear, so much, 
Loved I not honour more ; " 



THE POETS 299 

and To Althea from Prison, the last verse of which 
opens with lines equally well known : 

" Stone walls do not a prison make, 
Nor iron bars a cage." 

Sir John Suckling was born ten years before 
Lovelace, in 1608, and his life ended in even 
more tragic gloom than did that of his friend 
and contemporary. 

His career opened with the fairest promise. 
He had all that youth needs to give happiness — 
good looks, high birth, friends and money, and 
the gallant disposition which endeared him to all, 
and fitted him to shine in times of strife and warfare. 

In his early youth he gratified his love of 
soldiering by serving abroad under the brave 
Swedish King, Gustavus Adolphus, and when the 
Civil War began Charles chose him at once as 
a leader in the Royal ranks. When the Royalist 
cause was lost he fled to France, and thence to 
Spain, where he fell into the hands of the In- 
quisitors. The terrible and mysterious sufferings 
inflicted upon him by them unhinged his mind, 
and when at length he escaped to Paris he poisoned 
himself, and ended his brief life tragically at the 
age of thirty-three. 

His poems, and some not very deserving 



300 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

dramas, were chiefly written during the years he 
spent in London and Bath, between the times 
of his military service under Gustavus and Prince 
Rupert. 

His verses on Lord Falkland and his friends 
have been already mentioned, and one of the most 
interesting among his scanty poems is that en- 
titled, A Ballad upon a Wedding, in which come the 
dainty lines : 

" Her feet beneath her petticoat, 
Like little mice, stole in and out, 
As if they fear'd the light." 

His lines run with such a smooth easy rhythm, 
and are so bright and pleasant, that one longs 
for the many more poems from his pen which 
were probably lost almost as soon as written. 

In Henry Vaughan we see an admirer and an 
imitator of George Herbert. Like Herbert, his life 
was chiefly spent in the country, at Brecknock, 
in South Wales, and, like Herrick, he regarded 
this as somewhat of an exile. 

He was born in 1621, and followed the pro- 
fession of a lawyer for a time, and afterwards ex- 
changed it for that of medicine ; but in neither 
line of life did he achieve any distinction. 

His poetry is chiefly religious, and contains 
a few pieces which leave his master, Herbert, far 



THE POETS 301 

behind in their wistful yearning pathos and in- 
tense longing after spiritual things. Such are the 
two poems, beloved by all who study religious 
poetry, Eternity, and Beyond the Veil. 

It needed deeper insight than Herbert's saintly 
well-ordered mind could show, to produce such 
lines as those with which Eternity opens : 

" I saw Eternity the other night, 
Like a great ring of pure and endless light, 

All calm, as it was bright ; 
And round beneath it, Time in hours, days, years, 

Driv'n by the spheres 
Like a vast shadow mov'd ; in which the world 

And all her train were hurl'd." 

Vaughan shows us in a few words more vividly 
than Herbert in his careful verse could ever 
do— 

" The way which from this dead and dark abode 
Leads up to God." 

And Beyond the Veil, he sees the whole spirit 
world, peopled by those who have gone before, 
and real to him as the world of his own Welsh 
home. 

In style he imitates Herbert freely, but in 
depth of feeling and clearness of vision he leaves 
him far behind. The last verse in Beyond the 



302 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

Veil is almost a paraphrase of one of Herbert's, 
which ends — 

" Oh, show Thyself to me 
Or take me up to Thee." 

While Vaughan writes : 

" Either disperse these mists, which blot and fill 
My perspective — still— as they pass : 
Or else remove me hence unto that hill 
Where I shall need no glass." 

And Traherne gives almost the same expression 
to the same idea in his poem on Love, where he 
says : 

" His Ganymede ! His Life ! His Joy ! 
Or He comes down to me, or takes me up 
That I might be His boy." 

But Herbert and Traherne alike were incapable 
of penning lines so full of mystic music as 
Vaughan's wail for his dead friends : 

" They are all gone into the world of light 1 
And I alone sit lingering here ; 
Their very memory is fair and bright, 
And my sad thoughts doth clear. 

It glows and glitters in my cloudy breast, 
Like stars upon some gloomy grove, 

Or those faint beams in which this hill is drest, 
After the sun's remove. 



THE POETS 303 

I see them walking in an air of glory, 

Whose light doth trample on my days : 
My days, which are at best but dull and hoary, 

Mere glimmering and decays. 

O holy Hope ! and high Humility, 

High as the heavens above ! 
These are your walks, and you have shew'd them me, 

To kindle my cold love. 



And yet as angels in some brighter dreams 

Call to the soul, when man doth sleep : 
So some strange thoughts transcend our wonted themes 

And into glory peep. 

• • • « • « 

O Father of eternal life, and all 

Created glories under Thee ! 
Resume Thy spirit from this world of thrall 

Into true liberty." 

Traherne's poems have only just been given to 
the world from the oblivion in which they have 
lain for more than two hundred years, and but 
scanty particulars as to his life are yet known. 

He was the son of a Herefordshire shoemaker, 
which gives him a special interest among the band 
of well-born court-bred singers with whom his 
name is associated. 

He was born about the year 1636, and entered 
Brasenose College, Oxford, in 1652, as a com- 
moner, where he is spoken of as "a learned and 
sober person." 



304 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

He seems to have been a man of the same 
gentle kindly nature as the parson of Bemerton, 
but of a more mystic visionary spirit, which is 
revealed over and over again in his prose work 
the Centuries of Meditation. 

There we get glimpses of the world as it appears 
to a thoughtful and imaginative child, in a way 
which has seldom been recorded, and of which, 
although the form is prose, not poetry, we must 
quote a few passages for the sake of their beauty 
of expression. He is looking out upon the world 
which is new to him, and in which he sees every- 
where the beauty which his " eye brings with it 
the power of seeing " : — 

"The corn was orient and immortal wheat 
which never should be reaped nor was ever sown. 
I thought it had stood from everlasting to ever- 
lasting. The dust and stones of the street were as 
precious as gold : the gates were at first the end of 
the world. The green trees when I saw them 
first through one of the gates transported and 
ravished me ; their sweetness and unusual beauty 
made my heart to leap, and almost mad with 
ecstasy, they were such strange and wonderful 
things. . . . Boys and girls tumbling in the street 
were moving jewels : I knew not that they were 
born or should die. . . . The city seemed to 



THE POETS 305 

stand in Eden or to be built in Heaven. The 
streets were mine, the temple was mine, the people 
were mine, their clothes and gold and silver were 
mine, as much as their sparkling eyes, fair skins 
and ruddy faces. The skies were mine, and so 
were the sun and moon and stars, and all the 
world was mine ; and I the only spectator and 
enjoyer of it." 

In spite of religious doubts and difficulties 
Traherne grew up an ardent Churchman, and he 
made up his mind to renounce all hope of wealth 
or worldly advancement so that he should follow 
that search for true happiness which, he says, 
" Nature had enkindled in me from my youth." 
" In which," he goes on to say, " I was so resolute 
that I chose rather to live upon ten pounds a year, 
and to go in leather clothes and to feed upon 
bread and water, so that I might have all my time 
clearly to myself, than to keep many thousands per 
annum in an estate of life where my time would 
be devoured in care and labour. And God was 
so pleased to accept of that desire that from that 
time to this I have had all things plentifully pro- 
vided for me without any care at all. ... So 
that through His blessing I live a free and a 
kingly life." 

So Traherne makes a third, with Herri ck and 



306 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

Sir Thomas Browne, whose " kingly lives " were 
lifted above the babel of the Civil War. 

He took holy orders in 1661, and became 
Rector of Credinhill, or Crednell, near Hereford, 
and in 1669 he took the degree of Bachelor of 
Divinity. 

Later on he became private chaplain to Sir 
Orlando Bridgman, Keeper of the Seals, and he 
died in 1674, only three months after the death of 
his patron. 

He never married, and his work contains no love 
poetry, but deals chiefly with religious subjects. 
He seems to have been largely influenced, like 
Vaughan, by the poetry of George Herbert. 

His prose works, " Roman Forgeries " and 
"Christian Ethicks," were published before his 
death, but his verses were left in MS., and 
after passing through various hands were sold 
in the street for a few pence to Mr. William 
Brooke, and from him they passed to his friend 
Mr. Dobell, who has lately given them to the 
world. 

Traherne's poetry has something of Wordsworth 
in its simplicity, and something of c Vaughan in its 
intensity of vision. Take for instance his lines en- 
titled Wonder, where we see the same thoughts 
as in his prose work : 



THE POETS 307 

" How like an angel came I down ! 

How bright are all things here ! 
When first among His works I did appear, 

O how their Glory we did crown ! 
The world resembled his Etamity, 

In which my soul did walk ; 
And everything that I did see 

Did with me talk. 

The skies in their magnificence, 

The lively, lovely air, 
O how divine, how soft, how sweet, how fair 1 

The stars did entertain my sense, 
And all the works of God, so bright and pure, 

So rich and great did seem, 
As if they ever must endure 

In my esteem. 

The streets were paved with golden stones, 

The boys and girls were mine, 
Oh how did all their lovely faces shine ! 

The sons of men were holy ones, 
In joy and beauty they appeared to me, 

And everything which here I found, 
While like an angel I did see, 

Adorned the ground." 

The thought of his participation in the world's 
beauty and grandeur, his glorious heritage from 
heaven, runs through all his poetry. In the 
opening lines on Amendment it sounds again : 

"That all things should be mine, 
This makes His bounty most Divine ;" 



308 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

and this joyous appreciation of things earthly, as 
a pledge of a heavenly inheritance, never leaves 
him. 

His verse has as yet received little criticism. 
It surely may rank as religious poetry beside that 
of Herbert and Keble ; and the beauty of his clear 
and holy mind is such that one may safely apply 
to him his own words, that his 

" Thoughts are the angels which we send abroad 
To visit all the parts of God's abode." 

In a certain sense Richard Crashaw was also a 
religious poet, though not so entirely as either 
Vaughan or Traherne. 

Crashaw was born about the year 1613, and 
was bred up in an atmosphere of religion, as his 
father was a Prebend both of Ripon and of York, 
and was also a Puritan preacher at the Inner 
Temple. 

The younger Crashaw was educated at Charter- 
house, and at Pembroke Hall, Cambridge, and after- 
wards became a Fellow of Peterhouse ; and it was 
while in residence at Cambridge that he became 
a frequent visitor at Nicholas Ferrar's religious 
house at Little Gidding, in the neighbourhood, 
and there imbibed views of the opposite nature 
from those of his Puritan father. During the 
troubles of the Civil War Richard Crashaw joined 



THE POETS 309 

the Church of Rome, and seemed to find safe shel- 
ter within its fold for his gentle mystical nature. 

He was a passionate lover of music, which may 
partly perhaps account for his distaste for the bare 
worship of Puritanism, and his quiet, earnest soul 
found its delight in the observances and devotions 
of the more ceremonial Church, of which he tells 
in his Description of a Religious House: 

" Reverent discipline, and religious fear, 
And soft obedience, find sweet biding here ; 
Silence and sacred rest ; peace and pure joys. 

The self-remembering soul sweetly recovers 

Her kindred with the stars ; not basely hovers 

Below, but meditates her immortal way 

Home to the original source of Light and intellectual day." 

Perhaps it is of Cardinal Newman that these 
lines, and many others of Crashaw's earnest and 
melodious verse, remind us most ; and the same 
characteristics may have led each to the same 
shelter. 

Crashaw travelled to Rome in 1648, where he 
had been appointed a sub-Canon of Loretto, and 
there he died in the following year. 

There remains only one figure of which to 
speak, among the band of lyric singers whose 
music has sweetened the memory of the troubled 
years in which they lived. 

4 



3 io WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

Abraham Cowley stands rather apart from the 
poets of his day. He was neither a courtly nor a 
religious singer, his verse was rather that of a 
man of the world ; and the fact that he wrote of 
the world as he saw it, and reflected and pro- 
nounced judgment on it as such, may help to 
account for the waning of his reputation after his 
death. The succeeding age outgrew his work ; 
his ideas were original, and his judgments striking 
at the time at which he wrote, but they soon 
ceased to be new to a new generation which saw 
clearly by the lights which the older one had 
kindled. 

In his lifetime Cowley enjoyed an extraordinary 
popularity. He published his first volume of 
poems when a boy at Westminster ; and by the 
time he went up to Trinity College, Cambridge, 
he had gained a general reputation as a poet. 

He was an ardent Royalist, and served the King 
devotedly at Oxford ; and when Henrietta Maria 
went to France, Cowley followed her thither, and 
acted as her secretary in her exile. 

He returned to England at the Restoration, 
and lived quietly in the country at Barnes and 
Chertsey, pursuing his literary and poetical tastes. 

His poem On the Death of Mr. William Hervcy 
contains some stanzas which speak of Cambridge 



THE POETS 311 

in such a way as to recall to our minds Matthew 
Arnold's words about Oxford in The Scholar Gypsy : 

" Ye fields of Cambridge — our dear Cambridge, say — 
Have ye not seen us walking every day ? 
Was there a tree about which did not know 
The love betwixt us two ? 

Henceforth, ye gentle trees, for ever fade, 

Or your sad branches thicker join, 

And into darksome shades combine, 
Dark as the grave wherein my friend is laid." 

There is the same idea in each of the brotherhood 
in university days made ever closer in those long 
country walks through the flat meadows round 
Cambridge, or through Hinksey village to the hills 
of Bagley and Foxcombe. 

His poem On the Death of Mr. Crashaw, his 
contemporary within a few years at Cambridge, is 
another beautiful tribute to friendship. 

With tolerance unusual in his day, he writes of 
Crashaw's joining the Church of Rome : 

" Pardon, my mother church, if I consent 
That angels led him when from thee he went, 
For even in error sure no danger is, 
When join'd with so much piety as his. 

His faith perhaps in some nice tenets might 
Be wrong ; his life, I'm sure, was in the right." 

In his Ode to the Royal Society, lately founded, 
Cowley gives a good picture of Bacon stored 



312 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

with his new knowledge, and eager to impart 
it to mankind, and in his poem to Hobbes 
the philosopher, he draws a splendid parallel 
between him and the discoverer of America, 
addressing him as " Thou great Columbus of the 
golden lands of new philosophies." 

Cowley wrote of the men and the questions of 
his day, and he brought to the construction of 
his poems, and the essays which he also published, 
a clear judgment, a reflective mind, and vast 
stores of learning. 

His style was full of conceits, and was some- 
what pedantic, but any one reading his verses 
carefully cannot fail to understand their popularity 
in his own day. 

Such were the Cavalier and lyrist poets whose 
work forms such a green pasture of refreshment 
to eyes tired with gazing on the battlefields of 
Cromwell and Rupert. Some among the singers 
mingled in the struggle, for some the trial was 
too fiery to be borne, but in memory they all 
dwell apart from the strife, as some did in reality, 
in a soft light that lightens always the holy build- 
ings which Herbert loved, the friends for whom 
Vaughan and Cowley mourned, and which perhaps 
sheds its fairest radiance on the gardens of the 
" Hesperides." 



CHAPTER XII 

MILTON 

Above the bright band of courtier-poets, and the 
sweet religious singers we have named, towers in 
grand isolation the majestic figure of John Milton. 

He stands, as Shakspere does, apart from his 
contemporaries, belonging to no special age, pro- 
duced by no special circumstances, working for 
no special audience ; he stands, rather within 
another orb, where times and fashions count for 
nothing, whence issue the grand trumpet songs of 
genius by which all ages are swayed and inspired, 
and which is peopled only by the giants who once 
moved upon the earth, and whose work is an 
abiding heritage to all mankind, such mighty 
figures as Homer and Virgil, as Dante, Goethe, 
and Shakspere. 

Milton was born a Londoner, and in London 
he lived almost all his life. He was a Puritan, 
at the time when all Englishmen had to declare 
themselves either Cavaliers or Puritans ; but when 
one drinks in the spirit of his great Christian epic, 
one feels that what he was in religion he would 



314 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

have been at any time, and that though circum- 
stances may have contributed to develop his 
studies in certain paths, Milton would have been 
the same magnificent uncompromising figure, and 
would have written " Paradise Lost " even had he 
lived in the prosperous noonday of great Elizabeth, 
or the calmer evening of Queen Victoria. 

He was born in a house called "The Spread 
Eagle," in Bread Street, Cheapside, on December 
9th, 1608, and on the 20th of the same month he 
was baptized in the neighbouring church of All- 
hallows. 

His father was an Oxfordshire man, and his 
grandfather had been keeper of Shotover Forest, 
whose lonely height overlooks Oxford. At the 
time of the great poet's birth his father was com- 
fortably established in Bread Street as a scrivener, 
in which business he prospered so well that he 
was able to allow his son to live independently for 
an unusual length of time. 

The wife of the elder John Milton was Sarah 
Jeffrey, whose father was a merchant tailor in the 
city of London, and both she and her husband 
must have early noted the unusual development of 
their boy, whose childhood showed signs of his 
wonderful intellectual gifts. He was carefully 
educated, first at home, then at St. Paul's School, 
which was at that time in a most flourishing con- 



MILTON 315 

dition ; and later at Christ's College, Cambridge, 
which he entered on February 12th, 1625, when 
little more than sixteen. Milton possessed great 
personal beauty ; he was of medium stature, 
slender and active ; in childhood he had the fair 
face and seraphic expression of one of his own 
angels, and throughout his life he never lost the 
majestic beauty which so well accorded with his 
mind and writings. 

His father had prospered so well that he was 
able to retire to a pleasant country home at 
Horton, in Buckinghamshire, and thither John 
Milton went when he had taken his degree at 
Cambridge, and there he spent some six peaceful 
years, writing and musing among the sunny 
meadows of Buckinghamshire. It is to this first 
and happiest period of his life that most of his 
shorter poems belong. His grand Hymn on the 
Morning of Christ's Nativity, and his Verses at a 
Solemn Musick, were written while he was at 
Cambridge ; and in Lycidas, written in 1637, ne 
mourns the loss of one of his Cambridge friends, 
Edward King. Comus, L' Allegro, and // Penseroso 
were written during his pleasant sojourn in his 
father's country home. 

In the Hymn on the Nativity we feel at once, 
even in the opening lines, that we are in the 
presence of a majestic faith, before which terms 



3 i6 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

of controversy, such as Puritan and Prelaiist, are 

out of place. 

" No war, or battle's sound, 
Was heard the world around." 

So says he of the morning which heralded Christ's 
birth, and so we may feel in all his wonderful 
imagery of Bible history. It is far removed from 
the controversial atmosphere which filled the 
England of his day. It appeals to every time 
alike, in its grand simplicity of delineation and 
its glow of spiritual fervour. 

" It was the winter wild, 

Wherein the heaven-born Child, 
All meanly wrapt in the rude manger lies ; 

Nature, in awe of Him, 

Had doffed her gaudy trim, 
With her great Master so to sympathise. 

But peaceful was the night 
Wherein the Prince of Light 
His reign of peace upon the earth began. 
The winds, with wonder whist, 
Smoothly the waters kissed, 
Whispering new joys to the mild ocean, 
Who now hath quite forgot to rave, 
While birds of calm sit brooding on the charmed wave." 

Lines such as these carry us far from the din 
of civil and religious controversy. Here it is 
the old Bible struggle of light with darkness, 
the conquest by the New - Born Babe of the 
" Old Dragon," with which our minds are filled, 
and which could have no end but one ; and the 



MILTON 317 

poem finishes by recalling us once more to the 
solemn stillness of the holy stable, where — 

"The Virgin blest 
Hath laid her Babe to rest. 

And all about the courtly stable 
Bright-harnessed angels sit in order serviceable." 

Among the shorter poems which belong to 
this period of Milton's career, are two, which 
must have been written with a strong sense of 
personal interest in their subjects, the one on 
Shakspere, the other on Hobson, the University 
carrier. 

Shakspere died while Milton was winning 
schoolboy laurels at St. Paul's, and deep must 
have been the admiration of the ardent young 
student for his mighty predecessor. His words 
have a ring of almost personal appropriation 
about them : — 

" What needs my Shakespeare for his honoured bones — 
The labour of an age in piled stones ? 

Dear son of memory, great heir of fame, 

What need'st thou such weak witness of thy name ? 

Thou in our wonder and astonishment 

Hath built thyself a livelong monument. 

And so sepulchred in such pomp dost lie, 
That kings for such a tomb would wish to die." 

These lines were written while Milton was still 
at Cambridge, fourteen years after Shakspere's 



318 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

death, and it is not difficult to fancy the clear 
gaze of those deep eyes of Milton, looking across 
the narrow gulf that separated him so narrowly, 
yet so absolutely, from the one English man of 
letters who was greater than himself. 

In the lines On the University Carrier, we have 
a mixture of humour and pathos, rare in Milton's 
verse. 

Hobson, as the heading to the poem tells us, 
" sickened in the time of his vacancy, being forbid 
to go to London by reason of the Plague." 
His figure, no doubt, was one familiar to Milton 
throughout his Cambridge days, but little did the 
worthy carrier dream that the beautiful grave 
young student with whom he exchanged a word 
at times when on his journey, would immortalise 
him for all time in the lines beginning, " Here 
lies Old Hobson." 

It is always on the more serious side of life that 
Milton chooses to look, and though his memories 
of the country carrier ploughing through muddy 
lanes may have been cheery enough, he dwells on 
the fact that death — 

" Had any time this ten years full 
Dodged with him betwixt Cambridge and ' The Bull.' 

But lately, finding him so long at home, 
And thinking now his journey's end was come, 
And that he had ta'en up his latest inn, 
In the kind office of a chamberlin, 



MILTON 319 

Showed him his room where he must lodge that night ; 

Pulled off his boots, and took away the light. 

If any ask for him, it shall be said, 

' Hobson has supped, and's newly gone to bed.'" 

The second poem on the same carrier contains 

the oft-quoted line — 

" Rest, that gives all men life, gave him his death," 

and ends with the quaint play upon Hobson's 

circumstances : 

" Ease was his chief disease, and, to judge right, 
He died for heaviness that his cart went light." 

To this period of Milton's career belong the 
companion poems, L Allegro and // Penseroso, in 
which he regards life from the point of view of 
the mirth-loving man and of him who is thought- 
ful. The poems seem to answer one another 
throughout, and their very opening lines are an 
exact antithesis. The one deals with " Laughter 
holding both his sides," with " the mountain- 
nymph, sweet Liberty," with Orpheus and Fairy 
Mab, and with — 

" Golden slumbers on a bed 
Of heaped Elysian flowers." 

While in // Penseroso the poet calls on the 

" Goddess sage and holy . . . divinest Melancholy," 

and on Vesta, the 

"Pensive Nun, devout and pure, 
Sober, steadfast, and demure, 
All in a robe of darkest grain, 
Flowing with majestic train." 



320 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

There is little of the spirit of Puritanism which 
desecrated and destroyed so many of our finest 
religious buildings in his wish : 

" But let my due feet never fail 
To walk the studious cloister's pale, 
And love the high embowed roof, 
With antique pillars massy-proof, 
And storied windows richly dight, 
Casting a dim religious light." 

All that is beautiful to eye or ear is gathered 
by the inspired singer that it may — 

" Dissolve me into ecstasies, 
And bring all heaven before mine eyes." 

They are grand conceptions of the grave and 
the gay aspects of life, especially when coming 
from the pen of one who had scarcely passed his 
college days. 

Arcades and Comus, which belong to the same 
period of his career as L! Allegro and // Penseroso, 
are written in a very different style, and carry 
one back to the days of Elizabeth, and the songs 
and pageants which were then so constantly pre- 
pared for the entertainment of the Virgin Queen. 

Arcades formed part of an entertainment given 
in honour of the aged Dowager Countess of 
Derby, and Comus was a Masque presented before 
her kinsman the Earl of Bridgewater, at his seat, 
Ludlow Castle, when he was residing there as 
Lord President of Wales. 



MILTON 321 

In Lycidas comes again a more personal note. 
There Milton mourns the loss of his old college 
friend, Edward King, who had been drowned 
while on his way to Ireland. 

He dwells on their former days of loving com- 
panionship, speaking of them both as shepherds, 
according to the fashion of the day in so many 
poems : 

" For we were nursed upon the self-same hill, 
Fed the same flock, by fountain, shade, and rill ; 
Together both, ere the high lawns appeared 
Under the opening eyelids of the morn, 
We drove a-field, and both together heard 
What time the grey-fly winds her sultry horn, 
Battening our flocks with the fresh dews of night, 
Oft till the star that rose at evening bright 
Toward heaven's descent had sloped his westering wheel." 

It is a grand elegy on a departed fellow-student, 
and stands beside that later elegy in which Tenny- 
son mourned his college friend Arthur Hallam, 
in the undying verses of In Memoriam. 

While his genius produced these perfectly con- 
ceived works, Milton was still living as a member 
of his father's household, and storing his mind 
with the vast knowledge of all ages. His life 
seemed one long preparation for the creation of his 
great epic, " Paradise Lost." He seemed always 
to know his own power ; he might hold himself 
back in proud reserve, but he had no moments 
of diffidence, no time when he did not realise that 

X 



322 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

he was born a singer for all time. " He studies," 
says one of his biographers, " piling up the wood 
on the altar, and conscious of the power to call 
down fire from heaven when he will." 

And yet there was a curious contrast in his 
career. His intellectual life was one of magnifi- 
cent achievement, his private life one of absolute 
failure. 

All know the strange story of his marriage with 
his first wife, Mary Powell. She was the young 
daughter of an Oxfordshire Royalist, a former 
friend of Milton's father, and it has been sug- 
gested as a reason for the ill-assorted union, that 
her father gave her to the younger Milton as a 
simple inexpensive method of discharging his debt 
to the elder one. 

However it came about, the two were married 
soon after Milton's return from a long tour abroad, 
where he had amassed stores of knowledge to aid 
him in his future writings, but had learned nothing 
as to the guiding and guarding of a gay young 
wife almost twenty years younger than himself. 

She came from a cheerful Royalist household 
in the pretty village of Forest-Hill, about four 
miles from Oxford, and she was brought as a 
bride to a small London home filled with the 
severe atmosphere of Puritanism, and tenanted 
not only by her husband, who, genius though 



MILTON 323 

he was, seemed to lack most of the qualities 
desirable in family life, but by one nephew who 
was a permanent inmate, and another who came 
daily to share his uncle's teaching. 

Milton's views as to his house appear in the 
words which speak of his removal from his earlier 
lodgings in Fleet Street. " Looking round," he said, 
"for a place to settle in, I hired a house in the 
city sufficiently large for myself and my books." 

In his idea of home life himself and his books 
evidently came first, and his wife should have had 
the qualities needed to make her own place in 
the household. But poor Mary Powell did not 
possess these qualities, nor did she seem to have 
any affection sufficient to bind her to her high- 
souled but uncompromising husband, so that she 
soon went upon a visit to her parents from 
which she declined to return, in spite of Milton's 
repeated commands, and he employed himself in 
writing a Prose work on the laws of divorce. 

He held strict views as to the supremacy of 
man over woman ; primitive views, in fact, 
which are nobly appropriate in the mouths of 
Adam and Eve in Paradise, but which were not 
so well suited to promote comfort in everyday 
life in Aldersgate Street, in the middle of the 
seventeenth century. However, his published 
views, and his behaviour, which showed that he 



324 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

considered the idea of marrying again if his wife 
ignored his claim upon her, at length induced 
Mary Powell to repent her desertion. She con- 
trived a meeting between them at the house of 
a friend, and falling on her knees, begged his for- 
giveness, and expressed her willingness to return 
to her duties. 

So peace was made after two years' separa- 
tion, and Mary returned to Aldersgate Street to 
find the house filled with more boy pupils dur- 
ing the day, and an additional member added 
to the household in the person of her old father- 
in-law. 

Milton's writings at this time were in prose, and 
his time must have been well filled with the number 
and learning of the works he published and the 
growing claims of his small school, of which he 
remained the sole instructor. His methods of 
education for boys were far in advance of his day ; 
he trained them to understand and to observe, not 
only to learn by heart, and much that his Treatise 
on Education advocates has become routine in our 
own day, to the improvement of English education. 
The great struggle, religious and political, was grow- 
ing fiercer around him, and he was gradually drawn 
into it, though it was not the life he sought. 

11 1 trust," he writes, " to make it manifest with 
what small willingness I endure to interrupt the 



MILTON 325 

pursuit of no less hopes than these, and leave a 
calm and pleasing solitariness, fed with cheerful 
and confident thoughts, to embark in a troubled 
sea of noises and hoarse disputes, put from be- 
holding the bright countenance of truth in the 
quiet and still air of delightful studies, to come 
into the dim reflection of hollow antiquities sold 
by the seeming bulk." 

In 1649 Milton was appointed Latin Secretary 
to the Council of State, a post which brought him 
at once into the midst of the public life of the 
day. The political correspondence at that time was 
conducted entirely in Latin, and Milton's knowledge 
not only of the language itself but of the history 
and literature of so many European countries, 
made him a worthy holder of the important post. 
It was a critical time in which to take office under 
the Government. Charles I. had not been in his 
grave half a year ; already his memory was work- 
ing better in his cause than his living presence had 
ever done, and one of the first tasks which was 
given to Milton was that of writing an answer to 
the book which described the sufferings of the ill- 
starred King. The Eikon Basilike purported to be 
written by Charles himself, and many preferred to 
believe this rather than the more authentic account 
of its composition by Dr. Gauden, and its revision 
by the King on the eve of his trial. 



326 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

Milton's answer to the Eikon Basilike was en- 
titled the Eikonoklasies. He undertook the work 
unwillingly, feeling that " to descant on the mis- 
fortunes of a person fallen from so high a dignity, 
who hath also paid his final debt both to nature 
and his faults, is neither of itself a thing commend- 
able nor the intention of this discourse." But he 
had no choice in the matter, owing to his official 
position, and the treatise was written with his 
accustomed vigour and force, but gave little scope 
for his grandeur of eloquence. His Eikonoklastes 
went through three editions within a year, and the 
Eikon Basilike is said to have passed through 
fifty. 

Milton's life was now a busy one, and he wrote 
with an untiring industry which must have has- 
tened the advance of the terrible enemy against 
whom his genius and his strength were alike 
powerless. 

For ten years his sight had been slowly failing, 
and in 1652 the light went out, and he was left 
in darkness. In his grand portrait of " Samson 
Agonistes " we see his conception of his own posi- 
tion, and in his sonnet on his blindness we have 
his own word for his patient endurance of the 
hardest trial that a man of letters can have to bear. 
His thought of the long years before him, "in this 
dark world and wide," now that his u light is spent," 



MILTON 327 

is answered by the words which burst forth in such 
simple majesty, and which have become a house- 
hold text — 

" God doth not need 
Either man's work or his own gifts. Who best 
Bear His mild yoke, they serve Him best. His state 
Is kingly : thousands at His bidding speed, 
And post o'er land and ocean without rest ; 
They also serve who only stand and wait." 

In grand submission to God's will he accepted 
the darkness that now came upon him. He was 
too valuable a secretary to be lost, so he was 
provided with an assistant to write for him. The 
oculist's art was very different then from what it 
is now, and little seemed to be attempted, and still 
less done, to delay or alleviate his affliction. With 
the same absolute obedience to authority which he 
always teaches, he accepts his fate, and takes a last 
look at the faces of the friends he will see no 
more. 

When the shadows have encompassed him alto- 
gether, he can still say that " My darkness hitherto, 
by the singular kindness of God, amid rest and 
studies, and the voices and greetings of friends, 
has been much easier to bear than that deathly 
one. . . . Verily, while only He looks out for me, 
and provides for me, as He doth ; teaching me and 
leading me forth with His hand through my whole 
life, I shall willingly, since it hath seemed good to 



328 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

Him, have given my eyes their long holiday. And 
to you I now bid farewell, with a mind not less 
brave and steadfast now than if I were Lynceus 
himself for keenness of sight." 

Henceforth Milton looked no more upon the 
outside life of the England of his day, but not for 
one moment did he suffer the darkness to interfere 
with the useful activity of his career. In every 
public question he was concerned ; his official 
post gave him knowledge of all foreign and political 
affairs, and his wise counsel and ready pen were 
always at the service of the Government and the 
Lord Protector. 

In the year 1652, when his sight had altogether 
failed him, he moved from his official rooms in 
Whitehall to a house hard by, in Petty France, 
Westminster, which he describes as u a pretty 
garden-house, . . . next door to the Lord Scud- 
amore's, and opening into St. James' Park." Here 
it is pleasant to imagine him able to sit under 
the trees in the summer time, and perhaps led 
thither with the proud patronage of childhood 
by one of his three little daughters. 

But hardly one pleasant glimpse remains to 
us of the great poet's home life. His wife 
died after they had lived rather more than a 
year in the new house, and he was left to bring 
up his motherless children without even such 



MILTON 329 

help as her doubtful wisdom might have given. 
The eldest child, Anne, was only seven years old 
when her mother died, Mary was five, and little 
Deborah was but a baby. The same grave stern 
nature which had once repelled the bright young 
bride seemed now to alienate her children from 
their father, aggravated as his severity now was 
by his blindness and dependence. In later years 
he draws a terrible picture of the three daughters, 
who might have been such loving helpers and 
companions to him. In his years of poverty after 
the Restoration he was doubtless unable to give 
them many advantages of education or amuse- 
ment, even had his uncompromising views on 
the subjection of women not made him deem 
such care needless, but the result was lament- 
able. He trained them to read aloud to him, 
but without teaching them any of the foreign 
languages in which much of the reading had to 
be done. Anne, the eldest, was lame and de- 
formed, and so ill-taught that she could not 
write at all. As they grew up their father 
exacted their attendance upon him with a severity 
that made it irksome where there was no affection 
to sweeten it on either side. It is terrible to hear 
that " they made nothing of deserting him " ; that 
" they did combine together and counsel his maid- 
servant to cheat him in her marketings " ; and that 



330 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

" they had made away with some of his books, 
and would have sold the rest to the dunghill- 
woman." Truly those who have given most to 
the world have not always been the most success- 
ful rulers in their own households. 

For a brief period during their childhood the 
girls had had a stepmother, but Milton's second 
wife, Catherine Woodcock, to whom he seemed 
sincerely attached, died with her baby before 
they had been married sixteen months. In 1662 
he married for the third time, driven to it, no 
doubt, by the discomforts of his home life, and 
Elizabeth Minshull, though thirty years his junior, 
made him a good and careful wife for the rest 
of his life. 

With the Restoration came of course a com- 
plete change in the position of the great poet ; 
indeed, it is difficult to see how he managed to 
escape death at the time of the execution of the 
regicides. He had been Cromwell's very mouth- 
piece ; he had answered the dead King's supposed 
Eikon with a furious counterblast ; he had been 
involved in every political question during the 
Protectorate. 

Perhaps he had influential friends amongst the 
Royalists, to which cause all his first wife's family 
had been ardently pledged, or perhaps his blind- 
ness won pity for him, or his genius admiring 



MILTON 331 

exemption. Whatever the reason, his life was 
spared, but from henceforth he dwelt in poverty 
and obscurity, which made the dissensions in his 
family life all the more lamentable. 

But to this last period, the time of blindness, 
want, and sorrow, belongs the creation of the 
greatest English epic, " Paradise Lost." That, with 
its sequel, " Paradise Regained," and the " Samson 
Agonistes," were all published between the time 
of his fall from office, and that of his death. 
" Paradise Lost," on which he was employed for 
seven years, was published in 1667, and its sequel, 
together with the tragedy of " Samson Agonistes," 
were published in 1671, three years before his 
death. 

No words within a narrow scope can give 
any idea of the marvellous epic which was the 
masterpiece of the blind poet. It has about it 
the simple grandeur of the Bible narrative, with 
fire and vivid detail, and perfect working out of 
the awful fate of disobedience, such as thrill one 
afresh at every study of its pages. The lines roll 
on in a majesty never equalled before or since 
in the English language ; its style is so simple 
that boys and girls can gather the story and 
enjoy it, and its truths are so deep that the 
wisest men and women grow old in studying 
them. There is nothing like it in our literature ; 



332 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

scene after scene rises before one, each distinct 
from the other, each fraught with the same 
marvellous reality. 

The Meeting of Parliament on the Hills of 
Flame, when the fallen angels conceive their 
scheme of vengeance against the Almighty God 
for their expulsion from Heaven ; Satan's jour- 
ney through Space, and his coming to the newly- 
created Earth ; Adam and Eve's calm life of 
bliss in the Garden of Innocence, untroubled by 
the knowledge of aught but God and happiness ; 
then the encounter between Eve and the Serpent, 
Eve's fall, and Adam's pathetic protest that his 
love for her makes him prefer to fall with her 
rather than to stand alone ; and then the sad, 
sad change that falls over the whole scene, where 
the knowledge of evil has entered in ; the shame 
and the sin, the flight from the presence of the 
Lord of the Garden, when He walks in the cool 
of the evening, His questioning, His forgiveness, 
and His promise for the Redemption of the World 
in the ages to come : such are the scenes which 
succeed one another in equal power and majesty. 

There is hardly a more lovely picture in litera- 
ture than that of the repentant Adam and Eve, 
having accepted their punishment with humble 
submission, and feeling within their hearts the 
" spirit of prayer." 



MILTON 333 

" Thus they, in lowliest plight, repentant stood 
Praying ; for from the mercy-seat above 
Prevenient grace descending had removed 
The stony from their hearts, and made new flesh 
Regenerate grow instead, that sighs now breathed 
Unutterable, which the spirit of prayer 
Inspired, and winged for heaven with speedier flight 
Than loudest oratory." 

" Paradise Regained " is much shorter, and 
deals with the redemption of the world by 
Christ's coming, and with His temptation in the 
wilderness by Satan. 

There is far less life and action than in the 
earlier poem, and the dialogue is more lengthened : 
the ancient kingdoms of the world pass in turn 
under review by the tempter, and their glories 
are recounted ; then the scene shifts back again 
to the desert, where a fierce storm rages and the 
Saviour is left alone — 

" O patient Son of God, yet only stood'st 
Unshaken." 

Then comes the final temptation upon the summit 
of the temple, and the victory — 

" ' Tempt not the Lord thy God,' he said, and stood : 
But Satan, smitten with amazement, fell." 

Then appears the choir of ministering angels, and 
with their glad song of triumph the poem ends. 

" Samson Agonistes " is a magnificent tragedy, 
constructed, as Milton says in his preface, on 



334 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

purely classical models. "The circumscription 
of time," he says, "wherein the whole drama 
begins and ends is, according to ancient rule and 
best example, within the space of twenty-four 
hours." 

The work has a peculiar interest from the fact 
that in Samson's character, his affliction, his 
troubles, and his resignation, Milton describes 
himself and his own feelings. In the last words 
of Israel's hero, as he goes forth to his tragic self- 
imposed death, we may well hear Milton's own 
farewell to earth — 

" Happen what may, of me expect to hear 
Nothing dishonourable, impure, unworthy ; 
Our God, our law, my nation, or myself, 
The last of me or no I cannot warrant." 

And to the grand figure of Milton, working 
almost until his death in blindness and obscurity, 
never stooping for a moment from the heights of 
God, where he had climbed unaided from the 
chaos of religious strife around him, we can bid 
farewell in no fitter words than those which his 
chorus apply to the Jewish hero — 

" Samson hath quit himself 
Like Samson, and heroicly hath finish'd 
A life heroic." 

So Milton died, and no such epic poet has 
arisen in England since his day. 



MILTON 335 

Perhaps it needs stirring times to produce 
figures such as his and Shakspere's ; or perhaps 
another Milton is even now growing up amongst 
us. Be that as it may, certain it is that in times 
of quiet their work can be best appreciated. 

If we would live again in the England of 
Milton's day, we must study his life and learn 
his lessons. But, besides his mighty figure, tower- 
ing alone in self-reliant majesty, we must follow 
the lives of those of his time who helped to make 
England what he knew it, and who have each 
left a mark, though in some cases but a faint 
one, upon the busy years between the reigns of 
James I. and James II. 

Through the din of battle and the strife of 
tongues we must try to see clearly the great 
figure of the Puritan General, Oliver Cromwell, 
with his harsh stern face and his honest lofty 
soul fixed always on the one goal, the freedom of 
the English people. We must follow from the 
palace to the scaffold the pathetic figure of Charles 
Stuart, in his weak and troubled life and his 
heroic death, and pity him that, endowed with 
such a nature, he should yet " have been born a 
King." We must try to catch truthful echoes 
— distant though they be — of those debates at 
Westminster in which once Pym and Hampden 
joined ; and across the water we must follow 



336 WITH MILTON AND THE CAVALIERS 

Strafford and Clarendon in their arduous work, 
which merited greater reward than was bestowed 
by either Charles. We must follow the bell that 
leads to Herbert's church porch, and while we 
bow with Laud and Jeremy Taylor in reverence 
to the Church's teaching, we must feel, too, the * 
grandeur and purity of lives such as those of 
Baxter and Fox. From the band of lyric singers 
we must catch the sweet music of the day, 
whether sounding from Herrick's Devonshire 
parsonage, or deeper, sadder notes from the 
troubled life of camp or town. We must stand in 
awe for a moment on the mountains which 
Bunyan saw so plainly, and try to catch the 
glimpse he caught through the shepherd's glasses 
of the City that belongs to no age or nation ; 
and then, at the end, we may stand beside the 
blind poet with some faint appreciation of the 
difficulties in which his lot was cast, and to which 
perhaps he owed the clearest insight poet has 
ever shown into the wonderful dealings of the 
Creator, and " man's first disobedience." 



Printed by Ballantynf., Hanson &* Co. 
Edinburgh &* London 



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